Is it possible to have multiple children mapped to a single Parent in JIRA?

[Lee Packham]

Hi Community, 

I'd like for a Portfolio Epic to have multiple Business Outcomes as children and then for some of the Business Outcomes to have multiple Epic children.  Is this possible?  currently seems like i can only have a 1 on 1 parent child set up.

Am using using Advanced Roadmap, hence not wanting to use "links".

Many thanks,

Lee

[Jimi Wikman · Accepted solution]

Reading that, it depends on how you define that blasted Epic :)

• Portfolio Epic (strategic epic)
  • Business Outcomes (not sure what that is)
    • Epic Child (operational?)
      • Tasks (operational work orders)

If this is the structure you want, then yes you can do this. If business outcome is a label, then it should not be a part of the parent->child structure, but use one of the meta data structures (label, component...)

All parent items can have unlimited children items and all children items can have only one parent item. So it is a one to many relation.

[Jimi Wikman]

My take on why Epic is a terrible thing ;)
https://jimiwikman.se/resources/articles/professional/the-problematic-epic-the-undefined-term-that-cause-confusion-r236/

[Lee Packham]

Thanks Jimi for your response, much appreciated

[Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_]

Hi, @Lee Packham. Unfortunately, the short answer is "no." Not with Jira out-of-the-box, or with Advanced Roadmaps. 

(Slight simplification) Atlassian products revolved around the idea of a 3 (or 4 if you have Advanced Roadmaps) level hierarchy of issues with one-to-one relationships between them. 

That's the bad news.  The good news is you don't have to strictly follow with prescriptive hierarchy. You can craft your own using Jira issue links. The challenge is visualizing these hierarchies. Jira Software "as is" of Advanced Roadmaps expect the 3-4 level hierarchies.

Enter the Atlassian Marketplace. 

It turns out you are not alone — far from it in fact.  And there are a number of Atlassian Marketplace apps that are designed to help Jira users do what you describe. 

In my experience — 4+ years working in the Atlassian ecosystem for a marketplace vendor and 4+ years before that as a Jira user — the most popular are:

• Structure for Jira
• BigPicture

But there are others, too. You'll have to have a look and decide what works best for you. Or, learn to live with the Atlassian expected hierarchy of issues. Here's a marketplace search that might get you pointed in the right direction:

• https://marketplace.atlassian.com/addons/app/jira/top-selling?hosting=server&query=hierarchy

This Atlassian Community article describes a Jira admin who's pretty passionate about adapting Jira to the way you work.

Hope this helps,

-dave   

P.S. Full disclosure, I work for the company that makes Structure.

[Lee Packham]

Thanks Dave, really useful info