Hierarchy and dependencies

[Jonathan van Heijzen]

I'm new to Jira, and so far I really like it. Jira provides a great solution and enables the team to work well on tasks. However, I'm having trouble when I want to look at the bigger picture. For example, tasks 1-6 must be done in sequence. Without going into each task individually, how can I tell that task 6 cannot be done yet? I've played with the "blocking" and "is blocked by" linking but I can't determine how those settings show up in any report or dashboard and when I look them up on the internet the general advice that I see is to not use those features.

[Brant Schroeder · Accepted solution]

@Jonathan van Heijzen 

Jira Software is geared towards Agile project management.  Dependencies would be called out when you are planning work for a sprint and the team would then plan around it.  If you are looking for a more traditional waterfall planning tool that visualized those dependencies on a Gantt chart you can use Jira Work Management.  There are Gantt apps in the marketplace if you are running agile teams but need to see the work visually for planning https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?hosting=cloud&product=jira&query=gantt  You can also check out Jira Align for large scale planning.  

[Brant Schroeder]

@Jonathan van Heijzen please accept this answer to help others?

[Chris Cooke (Seibert Apps)]

Hey Jonathan,

For those still looking to solve this without a GANTT chart tool, we made Dependency Mapper for Jira .

It can help show the sequence of work using charts like the Dependency Board:

and Dependency Network views: