transition a feature based on subtask status for a give child story

Question

I am searching for an answer to a problem I am attempting to solve.  I have JIRA 6.3.13 and projects with independent workflow for Epics, yet another for Feature, another for Stories, and a common one used for Sub-Tasks.  Each are different one from the other.  What I need to be able to do is automatically transition the Features thorough their workflow based on the workflow state of specific sub-tasks of the child story.  An example of this would be that when a "Doc User Story" task is moved from "To Do" to "In Progress" JIRA would automatically transition the Feature from "To Do" to "In Progress".

I have already expended a good deal of time searching.  I have looked at the JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions Plug-In along with several others and the relationship of the transition parent seems to assume the sub-tasks are linked directly to the issue one wishes to automatically transition.  This isn't the case in the problem I am trying to solve as the sub-tasks are grandchildren of a Feature.  I have searched the KB and Communities and haven't found an answer.  I am modeling this in a "test environment" but still have not a lot of time to resolve this problem.  Has anyone attempted to perform a similar situation?

Thanks much in advance,

Bryan McMillan

Bob Swift · Answer

Update on Transition for JIRA has Transition issues support. As long as you can determine the issue to be transitioned uniquely by a JQL query, from a custom field, or some similar means then you can transition it. Use conditioning on the action so that the transition only needs to fire under specific conditions.

Bryan McMillan_mmet0u · Answer

Nicholas,

Under super normal circumstances I couldn't agree with you more.  However, in my world I am having to blend 2 SLDC models together, one being Agile and the other Waterfall.  The issue revolves around being able to adequately status "where things are" in the Agile world to those living in the Waterfall world as some levels of the organization haven't grasped all of Agile.  Nonetheless, consider this a small step to go in the right direct. The root primary purpose of this is to provide accurate/current status to the waterfall side.  My Feature issues are releasable units to production and thus my initial intention is/was to use this level to provide the basis for status.  As you might guess I have a number of customers to satisfy with accurate status including implementing Portfolio Management.  I know, not exactly a pretty picture mixing models but it is the real-world in my instance.

Having said all of that, I will give your excellent suggestion a try in my 'JIRA Dev Environment'.  I will post results once I have figured out a viable/repeatable answer.

Thank you kindly as it does indeed help to bounce these ideas off other Admins / Developers.

Bryan

Nicolas Bourdages · Answer

Yikes. Since your feature is 2 levels removed from the subtask, this is way more tricky. And it doesn't actually sound like a good idea to me to "skip" over the story and have the subtasks talk directly to the parent of their parent.

Perhaps you could cascade these automated transitions.

* In your subtask workflow, implement a post function (using the misc workflow plugin) that calls a transition in the parent Story
* In the Story workflow, implement a similar post-function, but based on a specific issue link between Story and Feature. You haven't mentioned this, but if you have a Feature between Epic and Story, logically there should already be an issue link to show which story belongs in which feature.

Example:

All your issues are To do (or an equivalent status in each issue type). You pick one subtask and set it In Progress. The post function sets the story In Progress, and that triggers its own post-function, which in turn sets the feature In Progress.