Initiative for plans

[Sophia Skinner]

SOS someone please help! 

I am trying to create an initiative as the top level hierarchy in plans. The initiative must be able to have epics from multiple projects as child work items and be visable in the plan feature with the hierarchy of Initiative > epic > task. 

I have created the initiative level work type in the global settings however cannot add this global work item to my projects. I've heard that in order to align with epics across projects, a singular project containing all the initiatives is the simplest path forward. 

1. how do I add my global initative work type to a project 

2. how do I align multiple epics across projects to those initiatives

3. How do I ensure those display in the plan feature 

Thank you!

[Dmitry Astapkovich _Colined_]

Hi @Sophia Skinner , 

As it was mentioned above, you need to switch to Company Managed Projects. But if that's not an option for whatever reason, you can take a look on Pivot Report we develop. It allows creating custom hierarchies based on linked issues from any number of projects:


 

It also works as a gadget directly in the Work Item View:

You can check the demo report here, no login required.

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Sophia Skinner

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

In order to add a new work item type to a project you need to add it to the work item type scheme that the project is associated with. You can do this by going to Project settings > Work items > Types and then up in the right-hand corner click Actions > Edit issue types. On the next screen you can add the initiative to the list of work items that the current scheme has.

Once you have added it and created a new initiative you can link epics to it by clicking on +Add in the detailed view and then Child work items and add the epics that way.

To display it in the plan, just make sure that you are including the project with initiatives and projects with the linked epics. 

[Mendel Liang]

+1 to everything Mikael has said - also, if you want to quickly associate all the existing Epics in your Plan with the new Initiative once you've done the above, you can select all the relevant Epics on the side (using filters for Work types -> Epic and then click on the topmost checkbox as a shortcut), and use Bulk actions -> Parent to associate all the Epics with the new Initiative.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/edit-multiple-issues-in-bulk-on-your-timeline/

Don't forget to save changes back to Jira after doing this!

[Sophia Skinner]

Excellent, thank you!

This got me most of the way. In the initiative it appears I do not have a "child" field. If I go into the backend of the project into fields and attempt to add it, the "child" field type does not appear in the search.

My guess is that this has something to do with the advanced roadmaps hierarchy. When I go into the work type hierarchy in the global settings, I cannot select the initiative work type I created in my project. when I type in " initiative" nothing shows up. Below is a photo of the work type hierarchy in global settings and of the work types in my current project board. hope that helps clarify. 

[Mendel Liang]

Ah, I see that you're working on a Team Managed Project (TMP) so there's quite a few things to unpack here...the bottom line is what you're trying to achieve doesn't work in a Team Managed Project only, and that you'll need a Company Managed Project.

TMPs only support a hierarchy setup of Subtask -> Story/Bug/Task -> Epic by default. The work type you've created (Initiative 1) is currently treated as being on the same level as the Story/Bug/Task work types, and can't be added to the work item hierarchy page as it comes from a TMP.

To achieve what you're after, you'll need a Company Managed Project (CMP) https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/what-are-team-managed-and-company-managed-projects/ and to create the work type via Jira settings https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/add-edit-and-delete-an-issue-type/ then add it to the hierarchy (which you've already found). Based on the fact that you are able to access the hierarchy configuration page, I'm assuming you'll have admin permissions on your Jira and be able to create that project.

This also means the initiatives will have to be created and live inside that CMP instead of the TMP, however TMP Epics now support having a CMP Initiative level parent, so other than this quirk of the Initiatives living in a separate project, this would achieve what you're after.

Note that if you want to have even higher hierarchies, you will need to create them in the same way as i've described above (living in a CMP - can be the same one containing the Initiatives).

The advantage of a model like this is that you can give the team working in the TMP more flexibility to manage their everyday work (Story/Task tickets), while you can apply more locked down permissions if desired to the higher level work across the company in the CMP.

Once the CMP containing the Initiative work type is set up, you'll also have to add it to your plan's work item sources for them to appear in the plan.

Regarding the child field - there is no child field in Jira, only a Parent field. In the Work Item View, the child work item panel displays work items that have the current work item selected in their Parent field. You can add new and existing work items as children by clicking +Add -> Child work item which will open the child work item panel. From here you can either create new child work items, or select existing ones. 

This is a rather manual process, hence why I suggest using the bulk actions in Plans to update the Parent of all the Epics once the Initiative has been properly set up.

I hope this provides some insights into how to setup hierarchy in Jira.