What is the best way to break down issues in a large project?

[Alberto Reig]

My team is working on a large software project, and I am struggling to find the best breakdown according to Jira's best practices. I previously worked with Azure and this is my first project using Jira.

I broke down the project into three levels: wide software features (1st level), these broken down into more specific software features (2nd level), and each of these divided into small individual functions to implement (3rd level). For these, I am using epics, stories, and subtasks respectively. I already have many stories within each epic, so for the sake of tidiness I need these three levels. 

Due to the size of the project, epics and stories are big issues which span multiple sprints, whereas subtasks are issues that my team can develop purely within a single sprint. For sprint planning, I would need to assign subtasks under the same story to different sprints, but it seems subtasks are not meant to work this way.

It probably has something to do with me not making a proper use of Jira. What would be your proposal for my project breakdown?

[Benjamin]

HI @Alberto Reig ,

You may want add another level and bring everything up one by using initiatives.

Here's an article from Atlassian:

https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/epics-stories-themes#:~:text=Initiatives%20offer%20another%20level%20of,any%20of%20the%20epics%20themselves.

This will allow your stories which would be your current sub-task to fit into sprints and assign each of them to different sprints. Stories usually should fit within the sprint. 

Then have sub-task used to break down the more complex stories if needed from the team.

[Alberto Reig]

Thanks @Benjamin !

Is there any way to include initiatives in the free plan?