What is the recommended way to model hierarchy of stories in JIRA Agile?

[Tim Yeung]

In our company, we start with a big story (epic), then it gets break down into smaller stories, but some smaller stories will still need to be break down into smaller stories (as it is still too big to fit into a sprint).

In JIRA Agile, it seems it only supports 3 levels, Epic > Story > Sub-Task.

We tried to use "blocked by" link to link bigger story to smaller stories, e.g. Epic > Story >(blocked by) Story ... > Sub-Task.

But the problem is that, there is no easy way to tell the hierarchy in JIRA Agile Scrum Plan mode,

i.e. How can I identify the leaf Story (the one without any smaller stories which can be fit into a sprint)

i.e. How can I see the tree hierarchy of stories

Thanks in advance.

[Robert Leitch [ALM Works]]

Hi Tim,

If you are hosting your own JIRA, you could try the Structure plugin. It will allow you to break down your stories into as many levels (even sub-Stories) as you need, and to see the entire hierarchy.

You can also group your Epics with higher levels if you need to - this is very good for getting a 'big picture' overview of one or more projects because progress, time and numerical values (e.g. story points) are all automatically rolled up through the hierarchy.

There is a JIRA Agile synchronizer that pulls in existing projects and sets them out in Structure according to their Agile hierarchy and synchronizes ranking with your Agile boards.

I'll be happy to help if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Robert