Change hierarchy from Initiative > Epic > Story to Initiative > Feature > Epic > Story
Asked by Puck van der Vossen:

Hello, I want to add an extra **Feature level** in the hierarchy **between Initiative and Epic**. I have no idea what the impact will be on existing Epics that already have a Parent Link with an Initiative. I have searched online and read plenty of related articles, but no clarity on this specific question yet.

I see this message: *Changes to the hierarchy configuration will only apply to plans in Advanced Roadmaps* ![Issue type hierarchy - Jira.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/236876iBA2E5CE73145936E/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Issue type hierarchy - Jira.png")

Is this true? Some Epics in our instance have a Parent Link with an Initiative and I am worried these tickets will loose their link. Anyone that have experience with this hierarchy change?


Answers:
author: Daniel Capizzi
body: Hi [@Puck van der Vossen](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2912048)

Just wanted to confirm what [@Clark Everson](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2969809) has mentioned in his answer - if you insert a level between your **Epic** level and your **Initiative** level, then your epics will lose their parent links because we don't allow skip level parenting in Jira. This means that both in the standard issue view and in advanced roadmaps your epics will appear without a parent.

I also wanted to clarify the message *Changes to the hierarchy configuration will only apply to plans in Advanced Roadmaps,*because it's one that we will be updating very soon. We've been working on bringing the concept of hierarchy into the core of Jira, so changes made to your hierarchy configuration will be reflected throughout your company managed projects. You should see this message updated sometime over the next month!

Cheers,

Daniel

comments: author: Puck van der Vossen
body: Hi [@Daniel Capizzi](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4481232) , thank you for your response. So what Clark says about the "parent link more than likely won't go away" is incorrect. I already had my doubts, since you basically skip a level in Jira.

Your announcement about the future plans about hierarchy configuration will be reflected throughout your company managed projects, is interesting. I'm going to reconsider whether an extra level is the right solution here.

Thank you,

Kind regards,

Puck


author: Clark Everson
body: Hi Puck,

So Hierarchy is a function of Advanced Roadmaps.

Thus changing it the parent link more than likely won't go away (always test in a staging instance though first) however Parent Links really only function in advanced roadmaps. I can confirm from experience if you add a new level in between rather than above, the advanced roadmaps won't work until epics are moved to the new Feature issue type level. So while the data will more than likely still exist roadmaps will from an end user perspective be broken until all corresponding features are created and epics are remapped to features.

The easiest way to avoid any of these issues though would be to create something above Initiative, like Theme and not change the current one

Best,

Clark

comments: author: Curt Holley
body: The other way could be to do a bulk update (or one-off automation rule might be easier ?) once the new level is in place and some "Features" added to replace the Parent link from Epics to the newly created Features and then also linking those features to the Initiatives.  

A bit of work to do as part of the "Change", but ultimately doable.


author: Clark Everson
body: yeah doable, i wrote easiest because for something like your solution there would be a lot of checks people often forge

i.e make sure the permission schemes all allow proper permissions to the executer of the rule, create the new issue type, migrate the data and then change the level of Initiative

But that's why you always test


Tags: advanced-roadmaps

cloud