How do you manage dependencies across various stories, tasks and sprints?

[ChenniChetty Natarajan]

Hi,

We have several stories and tasks documented in JIRA which are linked to each other.

The stories and tasks may be planned in the same sprint or across different sprints.

For eg., if story A has an outcome which is used by story B, how do I represent this linkage in a graphical fashion in JIRA / Greenhopper?

Is there a way to view a hierarchical / connected structure of various stories / tasks and their dependencies?

Cheers

Chenni

[Renjith Pillai · Accepted solution]

For enforcing checks:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.fca.jira.plugins.workflowToolbox.workflow-toolbox - Use the validators Condition on linked issues

For visualizing the dependencies

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/34717 - Structure Plugin

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.docminer.jira.issue-links

[ChenniChetty Natarajan]

Thanks Renjith!!

Exactly what I was looking for!!

Just another related question. Does the Docminer add-in also display the sprint details of tasks? For eg., if a related task / story is only planned 3 sprints down the line, the main task may not get completed. How can that be reflected?

Cheers

Chenni

[Renjith Pillai]

Docminer, I have no idea.

But what you said does not really look like scrum. You need some Gantt charts then in JIRA to see this relations.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?q=gantt

[Marcin Geb _SoftwarePlant_]

Hello Everybody interested in dependencies

Three ways to have the "graphical" dependencies:

1. "strong" arrows, available in cross-team Board and Gantt chart in BigPicture. Such an arrow represents the well-known finish-to-start relationship between two tasks. Why is it strong? Because it has the power to reschedule the following task if the preceding task catches a delay.
2. "soft" arrows - are similar in appearance, but they cannot reschedule anything, regardless of how 'impossible' a relation between two tasks is. All they do is attract the attention of a Board or Gantt chart user.
3. Work Breakdown Structure - this method is also visual, but it is quite unlike the 1. and 2. The WBS means a parent-child link, and you apply this sort of relationship to many, if not all, of the tasks in the scope. With 1. and 2. you can be more selective, you could apply 1. or 2. to a mere 10% of the tasks in the project. The WBS is available in Board, Gantt chart, and Scope modules of BigPicture.

You can synchronize 1., 2, and 3. with Jira's native issue links.

I represent the BigPicture maker. We actively develop visual dependencies in our products.

[Pablo Beltran]

You can do it by using the Links Hierarchy plugin. It fully supports Agile and draws links (including Epics and subtaks) with awesome HTML 5 interactive graphs.

Furthermore, it supports Sprints in a visual way, so you can easily track whether an issue is related to an Sprint and the Sprint status as well as the history of closed Sprints and filter by any of them.

[Michael Alford]

There are a number of excellent JIRA plugins that can help visualize dependencies.  The Dependency Risk for JIRA plugin displays a sprint's dependency list directly on the Backlog view of the Scrum board so the team will see the dependencies in the same view being used to plan the sprint.

(Disclaimer:  I am the developer of Dependency Risk for JIRA.)

[Tony Lancaster]

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