Working with Epics

I would like to break down epics into smaller epics and then create stories which can be done in a few days. Is it possible to create a whole tree of epics ending up with stories and tasks?

As far as I can see it is not possible to break stories in smaller stories and breakdown these smaller stories again, is it?

Please tell me what are the limits in breaking down epics and stories?

I'm a new Greenhopper user and I have a couple of questions. First, why do you recommend using Epics for lower priority stories? And second, I am having a hard time creating a list view that sorts all stories for a particular component by Epic so that I see an Epic followed by all its related stories (instead of having to go to the card view). I've tried sorting by both label and Epic/Theme without getting the list order i want.

In the instructions and screenshots on this page you use "Epic" and "Epic/Theme" for the custom field name. In instructions for [Setting Up Epics for your Project] section in GH Admin Guide you use only "Epic" as field name. When epic support was first implemented in GH 4.1 we created a custom field named "Epic" as the GH Admin Guide recommended. Since later upgrades to GH (we are now using 5.0) we see a new custom field named "Epic/Theme". We are now confused by the two custom fields; "Epic" and "Epic/Theme". This is very confusing.

Hey, as stated about the popup of Epic/Thema, that we will see the Epic and Summary on the right side of the popup, and issues related to this Epic on the left, but on my GH5.3, I see only on the summary on the right, and on the left, Epic, Story and Tasks are mixed up. Could you please check if which version you could have this nice grouping?

Also, the tooltip when moving the mouse over the Epic field is: Show Issues labelled by "EpicName", and not "Show all linked issues" as you have here.

Thanks for this nice work!

Hi,

BOX-6 (The Epic) shows at right corner a sum of the 3h 31m.

But, the sum of time spent by BOX-13 + BOX-14 + BOX-15 is 10h 32m.

What is wrong? Why this difference?

This example shows right corner field configured for epics to show linked issues. Yet, I did not find in User/Admin guides how this can be configured. By default, it is not shown of course and neither I found any suitable field to assign through Configuration. Any suggestions? Thank you!

Is there a way to raise a story from an Epic by using the drop-down "Create sub-task". 

I understand that Epics operate as a story label (which is real clunky btw).  However, when I'm doing an epic decomposition into deliverable stories, I want to be able to do it with the least interruption and thought. 

Greenhopper "trains" me to think in terms of decomposition from Story to Technical Task by using the drop-down.  I preach consistency to my guys when they're designing a UI, so it sucks to have them go "Oh, but your precious Greenhopper isn't consistent!  Nyah!"  Not least as they have a point!

Wouldn't be easier to add story on the same way as you created epic?

- story could be part of an epic (one or more)

- tasks could be part of story (one or more), eventualy tasks could be part of an epic, but i don't think this would be necesarry

I'm not sure what is exactly your idea of working with issus: scrum + greenhooper.

Could you give me some hint?

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Let say that i'm working on 2.0 application version. I would like to have product backlog (for whole 2.0 version) & let's say Sprint Backlog for 2.0.1 version. My understanding was that i wil have to :

1) create 2.0-backlog as new version with all epics

2) epics should be divided into stories (as far as i know this can't be easilly done with greenhopper?) in 2.0-backlog.
Let's say that we can treat epics like stories, so there wan't be stories in 2.0-backlog - only epics.

3) We divide epics into tasks (no stories as mention before) in 2.0-backlog.

4) We create new version 2.0.1 (Sprint Backlog) with parent set to version 2.0-backlog (Product Backlog).

5) We should use Planning Board to plan the next sprint & move needed tasks to 2.0.1 version.

6) If sth i not done @ the end of the sprint - it should be moved to another sprint.

This should work fine for most cases, but i'm not sure if this is the right way - what do you think?

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Secondly, let say that we have few stories that can be resolved be introducing new feature in application. This feature is complicated so the normal asumption for me would be - create tassk that have sub-tasks. But how can we deal with moving not finished sub-tasks to the next sprint? If we can finish 3 subtasks from 4 & we would like to release this version (2.0.1 for example). Should We close those issues in released 2.0.1 version but move parent issue with unresolved child to the next Sprint (2.0.2)? SHould it be parent-child relation? Or maby tehre is some other feature that allows sth like this? Or maybe i misunderstood sth & there is some other nice way to do it ?

I am missing the feature to easily move an EPIC with its related user stories to another iteration. Yes, I see them when clicking on the epic label. f.e.g. why not mark the related ones, when choosing the epic card, so that I can easily drag-n-drop them?

Any ideas?

This documentation appears to be about a prior or custom-configured instance of JIRA and GH. I filed bug report http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-2833 ("Working with Epics" documentation is incorrect) about this.

Also, why can't we make these relationships via the issue editing UI? Filed improvement request http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-2834 (Users can associate user stories with epics, and see these relationships, through the issue editing interface.).

We have an agile consultant in. When I said that there are only really two levels of hierarchy, he said "you need to get a new tool".

He says you should be able to have epics, themes, stories (with any number of child stories) and then tasks.

I have managed to link epics to other epics, but there is no way to visualised this hierarchy which would be really useful. Currently is it quite confusing.

I installed the issue hierarchy plugin that shows a nice treeview of an issue and it's descendants, but it would be great if when linking issues the epic/theme fields could be automatically setup and vice-versa - this would stop us having to do the same thing twice (i.e. populate the epic field of a story with its parent item and create an issue link in the jira screen).

I'm transitioning from mingle, where I defined a hierarchy that went:

Epic -> Feature -> Story ->Subtask

That worked well for creating a rather complex system with subsystems. We're moving to Jira because of the integration with Confluence, but fear of hierarchy seems built-in.  I see the hierarchy above as a natural way of elaborating the initially high-level conceptions of major functionality into developable stories. The stories are then restricted to at most a few ui screens (or a single wizard) implementing a very specific user goal.

We have tried to use Epics as third hierarchy but it doesn't really work for us in a big project.

It's fine for first iteration of stories. They will be written from design team and are all well designed. But when it comes to production, polishes and bugs pop up that are related to some part of the epic. This is done by anybody in the team and they don't know the ID of the epic. We tried with human readable epics but this doesn't work either because resolved epics won't stop showing up in the autocomplete list.

Before trying the epics we already tried lots of other workarounds. For our team the missing third level of structure is the biggest single flaw in Jira.

Hi,

it is strange to referring an Epic with its key instead of name on the card view. I there any possibility to fill the combo with epic names instead of keys?

We just installed GreenHopper and I'm trying to determine the best way to organize our work.

We have a single development team (10 people) working on multiple simultaneous business "projects." A project is comprised of requirements and use cases. For example, we might have one project to create a new widget and another project to fix a production defect.

Right now, we create a separate JIRA project for each business project. For example: "New Widget 2011" and "Fix Defect #13." Then within each JIRA project, we create issues (which represent the requirements of the project) and decompose those issues into sub-tasks (which represent the development tasks needed to produce the required deliverables).

Using GH, we can look at a single project (e.g., New Widget 2011) and prioritize its tasks by dragging & dropping cards. This makes it easy for a developer to know when to work on Task A and when to work on Task B within the context of that project

However, what we really need is a way to prioritize work ACROSS projects, so that our developers know when to work on New Widget tasks and when to work on Fix Defect tasks.

How can we accomplish this?

I'd also like to know whether and how we can use JIRA or GH to allow developers to see their work (i.e., their cards/tasks) from multiple projects in a single view. From what I can tell, GH displays everything in the context of a single project. We need to show prioritized work across projects.

Thanks.

HELP!

I have installed jira 4.4.1 and greehopper, when I create stories and epics. I cannot associate the story to an epic. When I follow the tutorial above, the "Epic fiel" does not appear in the card. Any idea????

I just need a simple view that shows nested stories under their parent Epic. This would be so helpful in trying to determine how much of an Epic is complete. I am finding the Epic/Story implementation in Greenhopper is useless, and it's making it doubly difficult to get my product owner's buy-in when I cannot even offer this simple view. 

Adding my voice to the Choir. I want Epics to parent Issues not just be a glorified label search.

In the interest of saving some users of Jira/Greenhopper some pain, I have highlighted a few important points because this documentation SUCKS!!!

I STRONGLY suggest Atlassian updates this very poor and very incomplete documentation. So, here is what I learned after banging my head on the desk for a while...

1) Epics are not parents of stories. Period. They are helpful but do not think of them as a parent of a story. It just doesn't work that way so don't look for anything like that.

2) You create an Epic just like you create a story. But, this whole Epic thing is really a Greenhopper/Agile part, not part of Jira. So, I suggest going to Agile->Planning Board->Create Card instead of going via Jira to create it because Jira is just going to confuse you on this topic.

3) Okay, I have created my Epci but how do I tie together the story and Epic??? Well, this is the part that could use some work since it is really limited on where an how you can do that. But, here are your options:

- First off, make sure you have your project configured for this or you are dead in the water: Go to "Planning Board" within the Agile section of Jira. Click on Tool->Configuration on the right hand side of the screen (must be admin of project). From there, you need to change your project to the Scrum project template if it is not already.

- Go back to the Planning Board and change your view to the "Cards" view because the Summary view does not display the Epic for you to edit. Now that you can see this field, you can relatively easily edit it on existing stories.

- Use "Create card" from the Planning Board and you will be able to specify the Epic's ID from the card creation screen.

- It is probably my config but there appears to be no way to edit the Epic using Jira so I am only able to edit using the Agile interface (i.e., Greenhopper)

4) But wait... now I can put the epic on any card and it doesn't seem to inherit that to child cards??? Shouldn't it only allow me to add that to a story and then all tasks of the story also are part of the Epic?

Well, you'd think so but that is just not how it works. Epics must be applied manually to all stories and tasks that you want related to it. So, you either need to choose to apply the association to every task or just put it on the parent story and know that you need to drill down to get to the tasks.

5) If you want to see what is going on with your Epics, always use Greenhopper/Agile view, not Jira. Jira doesn't appear to display the epic information so you can't really use Jira effectively to sort out what is going on. Maybe this is part of my config but...

Hope this helps a few people...

I want to import a huge lot of hirachical organized Epics/User Storys to Jira through csv file. How can I automatically create the label for stories, linked to a specific epic. Similar to the Issue ID and Parent ID construct for tasks?

Just want to echo all the comments already here about making Epics parents of Stories, not just labels. Further, I would really like to be able to create custom hierarchies with any number of levels (not just Issue and Sub-Task).

Please read definitions:

http://agile101.net/2009/08/10/the-difference-between-agile-themes-epics-and-user-stories/

My issue is that I want to differentiate between Epic and Themes.   I have decided to use Epic type and is GH functionality for Epics and a custom lable for themes but I am not sure if there is a better way.  Anyone?

Is there a way to filter 'Resolved'  issues when viewing an epic and associated issues? Viewing all the issues, resolved and open, is in many cases not very useful and makes the whole thing unreadable.

Completely agreed. Epics are floaters and do not graphically appear above the user stories that they are linked to on the planning board. Seriously a problem. 

Why are epics counted as 20 points? 

Does anyone what statuses can be created for "Epic" and "Story" issue types? Typically a status can be "Opened", "Closed" , "In progress", but i can imagine that there are more such intermediary statuses. Can anyone give me a complete list of available statuses for "Epic" and "Story" issue types?

Can Epics be used with Kanban projects? The issue type is there but I didn't find a way to associate a Store with an Epic on the rapid board.

BTW, I've tried to add the Epic/Theme field to the default screen as someone hinted here in the comments but when I then go to edit the issue, what should I put into this field? Auto-suggest doesn't suggest anything, should it be the issue id?

Working with Large teams I am perplexed as to why I can't have Multiple Stories under an Epic and shown as an indent in List view as a task does for a Story. This need sorting.