How can we create an issue type of "feature" in between Epic and User story?

[Jhan Knebel]

__PRESENT

How can we create an issue type of "feature" in between Epic and User story that is correctly represented in the hierarchy?

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @Jhan Knebel,

as already mentioned, Jira Premium allows additional hierarchy levels, however these hierarchy levels are always only on top of epics. Adding something below epics is possible, but tricky - see this thread for a thorough discussion on the matter.

As you'll see in the linked discussion, one way to implement your exact hierarchy could be via issue links. Issue links can connect any issue with any other issue, so you have complete freedom. The downside is that Jira doesn't really recognise an issue link as a parent/child relationship, and therefore won't give you a lot of hierarchy-related features.

There are, however, a number of hierarchy-focused apps on the Atlassian Marketplace that can help with this. E.g., my team and I work on an app in which your use case should be easy to solve: JXL for Jira. 

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a long list of advanced features, including the support for configurable issue hierarchies. These issue hierarchies (a.k.a. structures) can be based on Jira's built-in parent/child relationships (like epic/story, or task/sub-task), and/or based on issue links of configurable issue link types (like is parent of/is child of).

E.g., this is an example of a hierarchy similar to the one you're looking for: 

In this example, epics, features, and stories are connected via issue links.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Jhan Knebel 

Technically, you can't do that.

What you can do is change the name of the current issue type "Epic" to "Feature". Thereafter the Feature issue will function like Epics, showing up in the Epics panel in Agile boards.

You can then create a new issue type and make it Epic. In your Issue Type Hierarchy you would then add another level above level 1 (where the Feature issue type is) and move your new Epic issue type above Feature.

Jira's native issue type hierarchy is only 3 levels

Level 2 - the original Epic issue type
|-- Level 0 - standard issue types
    |-- Level -1 - subtask issue types

Jira doesn't support inserting a level within those three levels. It only supports adding levels above Level 1.

With third party apps you can "insert" levels, but only the third party app can then help you visualize that hierarchy. In Jira the third party app leverages the generic issue linking functionality to track the parent/child relationships.