Problems with issue hierarchy in

[Melle van Keulen]

We plan to use the scrum board but run into the problem that the issue itself is too big to put in a sprint.

A little bit of context, we have the following hierarchy:

Epic > Feature > Task

This means we can only put issues at featurelevel directly in sprints. These are too big chunks of work and we are looking for a possibility to put a number of tasks from that feature in the sprint. 

Am I overlooking this possibility to put smaller chunks of work in a sprint or is our hierarchy approach wrongly configured?

PS. I've found settings for hierarchy level to put an issuetype (initiative) above Epics but these only apply for advanced roadmaps. It is possible to make this initiative a parent for different epics (so it's hierarchy is above epics, right?) but than looking at the backlog, it shows the initiative as the same hierarchy level as features.

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Melle van Keulen,

The basic hierarchy in standard Jira is Epic > Task > Sub-Task. When planning sprints, it is issues at the Task level that are actually being added to the sprint (sub-tasks are included automatically) and issues at the Epic appear in the Epic panel on the left hand side in your backlog, where they help you filtering the task level issues for easier planning.

Only very recently it has become possible to add other issue types at the Epic level, thus introducing the possibility to have another issue type above the task level than just the Epic. You can read more about that change in this community post.

However, that does not change the fact that it is still issues below the Epic (or in your case Feature) level that you would add as work to a sprint. So maybe indeed that does not fit entirely with your hierarchy.

On a final note, as an advanced roadmaps user you can indeed add levels higher up in the hierarchy. But you are right in stating that that only has effect when visualising the roadmap in Advanced Roadmaps, not in your sprint backlog.

Hope this helps!  

[Melle van Keulen]

Hi @Walter Buggenhout ,

Thanks, this clears up a lot.