WBS into Gantt excel to JIRA Kanban

[Desislava Drazhkova]

Hi, all! I could say I am new to JIRA, so please excuse me if this doesn't make sense but..I have a Work Breakdown Structure into Gantt Excel and I am trying to enter the project in JIRA Kanban board. The WBS has 3 levels: Level 1: 1,2,3...; Level 2: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3....; Level 3: 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3... pretty standard.

 For me the most logical way would be to create in Kanban Level 1 as Components (Goals); Level 2 as Tasks (Deliverables) and Level 3 as Subtasks (Individual tasks).

But I was asked to create Level 3 as Components, which I guess would leave me with Level 1 as Tasks and Level 2 - Subtasks. The main reason - to use quick filters to distinguish the three different levels of tasks,

Now I am basically very confused - I did spend a lot of time reading about JIRA components, tasks, subtasks, etc, and I still can't stop wondering if 1) I misunderstood the entire Kanban system, or 2) Is this really the only way to clearly distinguish the different levels of the project?

I will appreciate your advice... Thanks a lot in advance!

[Jacob Vu]

Hi @Desislava Drazhkova

Kanban boards aren't really used as a WBS. It's mostly used to take a high-level look at the work that needs to be done and where things are at.

If you're trying to emulate a WBS, I'd suggest reviewing issue types and using Epics, Stories, Tasks and Sub-tasks to break down work. Level 1 would be your epic, Level 2 would be stories/tasks and then level 3 would be your sub-tasks. 

There's a lot more when it comes to using Jira for project management so let me know if you have any questions as I do a lot of work in this space.

Jacob