Epic and Stories hierarchy

[mennojansz]

We're using GreenHopper and I'm a bit confused about what the recommended approach is with Epics and their sub-stories.

I notice I'm unable to add a Story as a subtask of an Epic. Is this not possible?

If not, what is the recommended way to link an Epic to the sub-stories it's broken into? Make use of labels perhaps?

[mennojansz · Accepted solution]

OK,

Having given this some more thought and played around in JIRA, I see that having epics with their sub-stories as sub-tasks does not work well, even though it seems the logical approach at first.

It means it's then not easily possible to drag and drop a sub-story of one epic above the sub-story of another epic to give it a higher rank, without dragging the whole epic and giving it a higher rank over the other epic.

Also it also doesn't make much sense from a Scrum perspective, as during the sprint new user stories will be added to the epic as the requirements become more defined, and the Epic will not finish in one sprint.

So better to break the epic down into stories using labels to provide the hierarchy back to the parent epic. This will allow the structure and reporting by epic that the product owner wants. Labels seems to be more suitable than using an issue link.

Hope that makes sense, and if anyone has a better way of doing this let me know.

Cheers,

Menno

[Kim Poulsen]

With the latest GreenHopper version I do not see how you could have a problem. It works like this:

1. create an epic (very easy on the scrum board) and give it a label

2. On that epic you can now directly create stories which are automatically linked to the epic

Alternatively you can enter stories a you would normally do ('c') and drag them on to the relevant epic on the scrum board afterwards.

3. Ranking of Epics is doen in the Epic column and that ranking does not move the rank of its stories.

4. Ranking of Stories regardless of their associated Epic is possible so that it is possible to have stories from one Epic mixed in with stories from other epics. No problem.

Sub-tasks are not supposed to be used on epics, just on stories. We use sub-tasks as the developer's own personal agenda for solving the story. Sub-tasks are not shown in planning view for ranking which emphasizes this approach.