Roll-ups and hierarchy

Jira work is a tree: initiatives hold epics, epics hold stories, stories hold sub-tasks. Roll-ups add up everything under each issue, so an epic’s story points include its stories’ points.

The default hierarchy

Out of the box, levels follow Jira’s own hierarchy:

Initiative › Epic › Story › Sub-task

Each level finds its parent through Jira’s parent field. Add a level, such as Epic, to Rows to group issues under it.

Your own levels

Under Edit layout → Options → Hierarchy you can change the levels:

• Name each level as your teams call it.
• Holds says which issues belong: a Jira hierarchy level, or a list of issue types.
• Parent says how a level finds its parent in the level above: Jira’s parent field, or an issue link such as “is implemented by” in either direction.

So a Theme level above initiatives, linked by “relates to”, works just like the built-in levels.

How roll-ups count

With Roll up the hierarchy on (under Options → Show), each issue counts towards every level above it:

• An epic’s story points include its stories and their sub-tasks.
• An issue under two parents counts once under each, but only once in the grand total.
• Issues with no parent in scope appear under No Epic (or the level’s name).
• Links that loop back on themselves are ignored, so nothing counts twice.

Turn it off to count only issues that sit directly at each level.

The issue tree view

Issue tree shows every issue under its parent with rolled-up values, status and assignee. Parents that are only there for grouping, or that your filters exclude, are shown dimmed.