Are there plans to enable a parent-child relationship for ideas?
Asked by Anna E Keeton:

We use the opportunity solution tree in our product teams, and so parent-child relationships are really key to visualizing ideas.  

Currently I've hacked this by creating new fields and then relying on tagging. We have a field for type (opportunity/solution), and then a field for opportunity (opportunity names), and then a field for parent opportunity (parent opportunity names)....  

But as you can imagine, it's not very scalable, and anytime we find a new opportunity, it's quite a bit of faff

Does Jira plan to bring this functionality to JPD in the near future?


Answers:
author: Andrew
body: Hi.

Same thing for me. we would parent/child relationship for a few different ways of planning.

We summarize features into larger initiatives and roll up initiatives into programs.

At the program level, i think the drop-down field solution would be an OK workaround because there programs are small in number (like 3-4 strategic themes for the year).

But when it comes to features and initiatives, as our list of initiatives grows i think the parent child relationship will be needed.


author: Amina Bouabdallah
body: hi there ! yes, I am doing discovery on the matter now! Any chance you might chat on the phone ? Here is the link to book time: <https://calendly.com/aminabh/jpd-hierarchies-discovery-call>

Looking forward to our chat!

Amina

comments: author: Andrew
body: Happy to chat if you like!


author: Tim Gregory
body: [@Amina Bouabdallah](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5343033) The Calendly link has expired, but I would love to connect and give feedback on the parent/child (opportunity/solution) need in JPD.  
Our challenge is that we operate across multiple countries and segments, which means that for every JPD idea we need to manage \~8 value estimates and GTM roadmaps.

For each of our combinations of country and segment we have a different view on Now/Next/Later.

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We've done the trick that everyone seems to be using to create a tag that links ideas, but we cannot link to the "core" idea (it's just a tag), and this setup also results in a lot of duplication content of idea description, evidence etc that is really only needed on the core of the idea, not scattered across the solutions that are used for estimation of effort, value, and roadmapping purposes


author: Amina Bouabdallah
body: Hello Folks! this is currently in discovery in the JPD PM team! :)

comments: author: Marek Cais
body: Great news. I'm looking forward to it.


author: Angie Adams
body: Great to hear!


author: Tim Gregory
body: [@Amina Bouabdallah](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5343033) can you share any updates on this opportunity/solution nesting approach that has been discussed for JPD? We work across multiple countries and brands and because we have different target rollout dates, different value estimates it creates a lot of duplication of JPD ideas. We would love a way to group them together that is better than tagging (which doesn't solve the issue of replicated information across the cloned ideas)


author: Brent Vierling
body: (After hitting another time of - how to I add this into JPD, I decided to come out here and post. :) )  

I'm also wondering if there is any status of this? We are running into the same issue as many others. We would like to be able to mark an idea as an opportunity and assign an idea to opportunities (potentially multiple?).

We go between having a general idea/opportunities for a module and adding the specific feedback/ideas inside the general idea's Overview but that doesn't let us rank individual ideas or discuss with stakeholders very well.

Then we swing to putting in a specific idea but lose the context of the bigger picture of what opportunity it is targeting. Different PM's are doing this differently inside the same JPD project and makes it messy. The workaround is messy when dealing with many products by constantly editing custom fields and adding options.  

In essence, I think we are looking for the ability to have user created issue types with a user specified hierarchy and using a parent field to link them (like Jira). Of course, we would want to be able to drag the issues in a UI to change the parent.   

Then we could create Outcome, Opportunity, Solution (already have Idea which is sort of similar), and Assumption Issue types and get the full Opportunity Solution Tree experience.  

The one big difference from Jira is (I've only thought about this for a few minutes), it seems like we might want to link an opportunity to multiple outcomes. In other words rather than a 1:1 parent to child, it becomes more of a 1 to many. Although I'm not certain of this as this might get messy fast.  

Even if we didn't go all the way, just getting a way to nest an idea with a parent idea would help out a whole bunch!


author: Tom Kent
body: [@Tanguy Crusson](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/502312) shared [this loom video](https://www.loom.com/share/24164464b75f417d82b489711f220260?sid=d29e1929-1705-4237-979f-eb697988c0c2) about a concept they're working on for this problem, but I don't know if it will make it into the final product.

It is less of a hierarchy, and more of a built-in support for the type of label relationships you are already using.

Separately, there is also a feature being worked on for Advanced Roadmaps on the regular Jira software side which would allow grouping issues by ideas. That's kind of like a parent-child relationship, insofar as you can select a JPD idea as the parent for Jira tickets.

comments: author: Matt Jones
body: Being able to have a JPD idea as a parent to JIRA software Epics would be very beneficial.


author: Angie Adams
body: Thanks for sharing!


author: Marek Cais
body: Same here. I'm considering a simplified version of what you're doing: ideas are ideas (closer to solutions) and opportunities are a custom field (tag) and the view is set to group by "opportunities". That gives you an almost tree like view. Unfortunately you need to edit the field to add more opportunities and it does not allow for sub-opportunities. Plus no way to add context to opportunities, since they're just a field.