Is it forced to use "Epics" as a backbone or can I use manually input steps as a backbone columns?

[Jan Golinski]

Hi! Providing that the story map is being created using a set of "backbone" columns, not necessarily reflecting Jira "Epics" structure, can I define somehow or input manually the column names& groupings?

E.g. if there is a backbone structure in place (on paper), there is a different epics structure, and I would just like to use the plugin only visualize the concept from the paper using jira user stories...

If impossible, how would you advise to visualize the map?

Thx!

Jan

[Seamus Kieran]

Hi Jan, thanks for reaching out.

Easy Agile User Story Maps uses the Epic issue type provided by Jira Software to represent customer activities on the backbone. You can read more about our thoughts and philosophies on this in this blog post.

We use the Epic issue type so that we can link between Epics and their children Stories. This means that you can use the Epic Reports that Jira Software provides to understand progress. It also means that you can see the children stories on the view Issue page.

Thanks Jan.

Kind Regards,
Seamus Kieran
Easy Agile Support Team

[Jan Golinski]

Thank you, Jan

[Paul]

I think it is a pity that you use Epic for this.

Epics are by definition something that is time limited and you measure progress on in your backlog (e.g. story points) - which is a great build-in feature - and you can only add one epic per user story, so you can't use it for multiple purposes. The header of a story map can be something more persistent over time and therefore a custom field would be more suitable for the task