Stories to features

[Keisha Phoenixx]

How to adjust my hierarchy so that I can assign features as parents to stories. Currently I can attach epics as parents to features, but not features to stories. Please, CLEAR instructions. 

[Utkarsh Agarwal]

Hi @Keisha Phoenixx 

Welcome to the community!

To make Features the parent of Stories, you’ll need to adjust the issue type hierarchy under Jira Settings > Issues > Issue Hierarchy. This feature is only available on Jira Software Premium and Enterprise plans, as it uses Advanced Roadmaps.

Currently, it looks like you’ve set Epic above Feature, which means Feature acts as a child of Epic and can't be a direct parent of Story. To fix this:

Update the hierarchy like this:

• Level 2: Epic (optional)
• Level 1: Feature
• Level 0: Story
• Sub-task (fixed)

Once Feature is placed directly above Story, you’ll be able to link Features as parents to Stories.

📌 Reminder: Changes to the hierarchy affect all company-managed projects in the site.

More info: Configure issue hierarchy

Kind Regards
Utkarsh

[Keisha Phoenixx]

How can I do this? I can’t change the numbering from the issue type hierarchy screen.

Please outline step by step how to complete this.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Keisha Phoenixx 

Welcome to the Atlassian Community.

The numbering is automatic and indicates the parent/child relationships in descending order; i.e. 3's can parent 2's, 2's can parent 1's, 1's can parent 0's.

The Names on the left are just labels - they do not inherently specify the issue types available at that level.

It is what appears in the Work Items Types area that indicates the actual types of issues between which the relationships need to be created.

There are changes you have to make to the hierarchy, but I want to make a few points about the impact of those changes first.

1. The work item hierarchy is a global setting. Changes affect all projects in the Jira instances.
2. Parent and child relationships can be made between work item types that are in adjacent levels only. The work item types at level 2 can be parents only to the work item types at level 1. Types at level 2 cannot be parents to types at level 0.
3. If you assign a work item type to a different level that will break all current parent/child relationships for all issues of that type in all projects. If you reorder Feature and Epic that will break all existing parent/child relationships between features and Epics, and break all parent/child relationships between Epics and the work item types at level 0.
4. Epics are a special built-in work item type. That specific work item type is the one that is used for Epic-specific functionality like the Epics panel in boards and the Epics swimlane grouping. The Epic work item type cannot be moved to a different level, but you can change its name

Given the above, if you still want to proceed.

1. Go to your Work Item Types screen, where you can manage the work item types available in your instance.
2. Edit the Epic work item type. Change its name to FeatureA (Add the "A" because you already have a work item type named "Feature").
3. Edit the Feature work item type. Change its name to "Epic".
4. Edit the FeatureA work item type again. You should now be able to change its name to "Feature"
5. Go back to the Work Item Hierarchy screen.
6. When you look in the Work Item Types column you should see it reflecting the changes to the Work Item Type names - you should see Epic at level 2 and Feature at level 1.
7. Edit the Names for Level 1 and Level 2 to also reflect the name changes; Level 1 change the name to Epic, and Level 2 change the name to Feature.

By making the change in that manner you have not actually changed the hierarchy level of any of the work item types, so the pre-existing parent/child relationships should remain intact. All the work items that were previously the Epic types will now show "Feature" as their type name, but they will still appear in the places where "Epics" previously displayed. All the work items previously showing "Feature" as their type name will now show "Epic" as their type name.

[Trudy Claspill]

On a side note, this hierarchy applies only to Company Managed projects.

Team Managed projects manage their work item type hierarchy within each such project, and it is limited to 3 levels; the "Epic" level 1, the "standard" work item types at level 0, and one subtask work item type at level -1.

If you need additional levels above Epics to use with Team Managed projects, let me know and I'll provide more information on that topic.

[Calvin]

edit - turns out the below is wrong. It looks like you can from the other user answer. Thats neat!

Can you change your "Feature" to something else like a dummy. That way it may be chooseable in that dropdown you have there for the Epic. Then just rename it on the left.

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As far as I'm aware, you actually can't do this? Epics are sort of special and have a lot of special interaction between its children and where it appears in views (module section in backlog, swimlanes etc).

Your options are:

• Rename Epic to Feature (I'm going to guess thats why they added this functionality?)
  • https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/Upcoming-Rename-epics-in-your-company-managed-projects/ba-p/1874726
• Talk to your team to re-define what an "epic" is (for example all our teams know of Epics as features). And then they rename the item above it to a "Real Epic" sort of thing.
• Use the "link work items" functionality to create that linking
  • https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/link-issues/
  • Note this makes the linking from "how the team views the ticket" point of view. But it doesn't change things internally. This may mean you are sometimes "fighting" the hierarchy such as in Plans view, and you'd likely need your own alternative view like Structure to see linking in a way that makes sense.
  • Its also super annoying because after everyone tries this and sees the issues they then want to go to option 1 above and having to fix the work items becomes a big job across multiple projects.