Hierarchy

[Raoul Kaiser]

I used to be able to set what the issue hierarchy was. Where did that go?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

What do you mean by "heirarchy"?

[Raoul Kaiser]

*I used to be able to say all issues except sub tasks go under Epics. Then sub-tasks can be under all of the issues.

I wanted to switch some things around to make a more understandable hierarchy of issues. At Atlassian summit, Atlassian kept talking about features so I have been trying to change my structure similar to theirs.

Atlassian project defined in jira:

• Portfolio: Traffic
  • Project: Create Planning Screen
    • Feature (Epic) - Create planning board UI
      
      • Story - display data
        • sub-task: gather data

My current structure:

• Project: Traffic Planning
  • Epic: Create Chain of Custody Screen
    
    • Story: create UI displaying order level data
      
      • sub-task: gather data

There is currently not a way for me to truly identify a feature in the software. I need an easy way to display how we break down a big project and be able to pull it all back together.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, JIRA does Project / Issue / Sub-task itself. Epics would be considered at the same level as Stories. However, if you have the Agile addon, then you have Project / Epic / Issue / Sub task Then for Portfolio, you need the Portfolio addon.

[Raoul Kaiser]

I have the cloud version of Jira. I create a project then put epics. In the Epic I create issues from within the Jira issue. Inside of the stories I create sub tasks. I am trying to identify features easily like Atlassian was talking about at the Summit. I just don't see how they do it or define their structure in Jira. Maybe they don't use Jira. :)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That *sounds* like you have Agile, but not Portfolio. I don't think I saw an Atlassian system at Summit that did not have Agile installed - you need to check that you have Agile first, then we can go from there. Portfolio is another story, you will need to add that too to get the overarching portfolio functionality

[Raoul Kaiser]

I definitely have Jira Agile. I know I need portfolio but it is the issue structure I still have issues with.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, so you can create Epics, and use the boards to drag issues into Epics, or set the Epic link on them. Then add Portfolio to get the top layer, and you're done.

[Raoul Kaiser]

Still doesn't get me feature and I thought Feature was higher than an epic. If not or on the same level how do you tie stories into a feature?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I think you're getting confused. If you re-read your original structure description, you've explicitly specified "Feature (Epic)" which means they're the same thing to you. So you'd use Epics for "features". If you want to go above Epics, there's a couple of layers - the usual one in Agile is a "Theme" which is a collection of Epics grouped together for some reason. JIRA Agile does have that, but it's not implemented as an issue type above Epics, it's a dedicated label type thing. The other layer above that is to start grouping projects, epics and so-on into Project management structures - that is what the Portfolio stuff does. (A lot of places use the word "feature" to describe something similar to a story, and that is usually done at the same level as Stories, not above Epic)