Using SAFe Enablers

[Wessel Donkervoort]

Hi everybody,

I was wondering if anyone out there has experience in using Enablers in Jira which has been set up for SAFe.

We have been using a Custom field on all levels so we know if it's an Epic or an Epic Enabler, a Capability or a Capability Enabler, a Feature or a Feature Enabler.

Maybe I don't really have a question but it's more looking for confirmation: You can't use issue types for this since you cannot configure this in the hierarchy structure of Portfolio for JIRA right? 

Interested to see what you all think.

Regards

[Sylvain Gautier]

We tried the Plugin Jira Structure to implement it, and it works fine. Simply creating  a new Issue type named "Enabler" works also fine if you expect it to be at the "User Story" Level and not at the Epic Level

Regards

Sylvain

[Wessel Donkervoort]

Thanks for the answer! Sounds like a workable solution!

[Irina Mosina (TechTime)]

Hi Wessel, as Solution Partners we have implemented the same approach for various organizations but found that we needed to be able to propagate this flag to all children in that tree starting from Initiative all the way to the Story. For that we’ve developed an addon that will allow you to inherit any value from your parent issue down to the hierarchy automatically. You can then display it or report on it either in Structure or any other tool. From my experience implementing SAFe in Jira I wouldn’t recommend introducing a separate issue types Enabler Feature, Enabler Capability, Enabler Story etc as it clutters the setup quite a bit.  

[Sylvain Gautier]

Hi Irina,

Thanks a lot for this feed back

[Jeremy Chambers]

It's 2020 and SAFe 5.0 is out ... I too am wondering the best way to add Enablers to Epics.  Also how best to indicate whether an Enabler, Feature or nested Story is for Product, Architecture or Engineering (so we can filter them for each role).

[Ahmad Salah]

I have the same question,
I think we need to use same issue types; Epic for Enabler Epic, but add label "Enabler",
and do the same for story, then link any issue to the Enabler labelled issue,
What do you think?