Epic Feature User Story Tasks Hierarchy in Jira

Question

How can I setup this hierarchy in Jira?

Epic
 |
 +--Feature
      |
      +--User Story
            |
            +--Task

I'm having trouble linking a User Story and a Feature to a Epic

Answer 1

The closest you can get to this, as far as I know, is:

Epic
 |
 +--Story
      |
      +--Sub-Task

To accomplish this, define your Epics and give them each an "Epic Name". Then define your Stories, and within each one select the appropriate Epic within "Epic Link". From each Story, as needed, create any Sub-Tasks.

To give an example, if I were defining all this for, say, the workflow module of an application, I might end up with something like:

Epic: Workflow
 |
 +--Story: Draft a Request
      |
      +--Sub-Task: Node configuration
      +--Sub-Task: Database work
      +--Sub-Task: Business layer coding
      +--Sub-Task: Define expiration rules
 |
 +--Story: Submit a Request
      |
      +--Sub-Task: Node configuration
      +--Sub-Task: Database work
      +--Sub-Task: Business layer coding
      +--Sub-Task: Configure alerting
      +--Sub-Task: Define approvals
      +--Sub-Task: Define expiration rules
 |
 +--Story: Approve a Request
      |
      +--Sub-Task: Node configuration
      +--Sub-Task: Database work
      +--Sub-Task: Business layer coding
      +--Sub-Task: Configure alerting
      +--Sub-Task: Define approvals
      +--Sub-Task: Define expiration rules

This will allow you to drill down from Epic to Story to Sub-Task on a ticket-by-ticket basis, but you'll still need to do some fiddling with filters to and/or Agile boards for reporting, depending on how you want to see things. Jira does a good job at abstracting a lot of this, but it's not geared toward your exact approach, and trying to get it to visualize things the way you want rather than the way it wants is often an exercise in futility.

Answer 2

In JIRA, there's only really support for two levels of issue hierarchy--task and subtask. An Epic is unique and behaves more like an attribute of another issue. Kind of like how versions are just attributes that help with structuring the work in your project.

In textbook scrum, the only hierarchy is stories and the subtasks that get them done (there's no such thing as a 'Feature', so to speak). When a story is too big to fit into a single sprint, it's split into smaller stories, and the original 'big story' becomes an Epic and is used like a label to indicate the smaller stories have a common origin.

But it's not unusual to step outside of textbook scrum, and a lot of people use Epic like another dimension of Components or requirement categories. It's just that, as far as how JIRA is designed, other approaches have to be shoehorned into this textbook model.

I recommend evaluating Structure, an add-on that lets you define custom issue hierarchies. It's one of those add-ons where you keep finding more ways it can help you work, too. Oh, but it is JIRA Server-only, so if you're on Cloud edition...I can't think of any other way to help you. :(