If you’ve ever managed a project in Jira, you’ve probably had the desire to view all your issue hierarchies on one page. It’s one thing to jump from issue to issue, but another altogether to see all your issues in a tree on a single page. A Jira tree view helps you see how all the parts of your project fit together. This can lead to better product decisions and more granular tracking of the progress of your project.
Unfortunately, the best way to view your issues in a tree is not always obvious. In this post I’m going to take you through the ways you can view your Jira issues in a tree.
1) Use Jira’s built-in Roadmap Feature to Get A Tree View of Your Epics
If your project consists mainly of Epics and Stories or Tasks attached to those Epics, Jira’s built in roadmap may be a great option for your team. You get to see your Epics on a single page, and expand each Epic to view it’s children. Jira’s Roadmap is also a great place to set timelines on Epics when you’re planning a new project or release. You can drag and drop start and end dates on each Epic to get a clear picture of when each part of the project begins and ends.
With Jira’s roadmap, there’s no need to manually add Epics to your roadmap. This feature comes built-in to each project so you can easily get an overview of your issues automatically inside each project. Simply create your Epics, attach child Stories and open your Roadmap and they’ll be there. Another benefit of Jira’s built-in roadmap is you can easily copy a link to your tree view and share it with the rest of the team.
There are a few caveats through. If you want to see sub-tasks under each issue, you can’t do this in Jira’s roadmap. The tree only goes down to the issue level. Another problem you may encounter is you can’t use your saved filters to bring up a set of Epics. You can filter issues by status and assignee, but if you want to filter by anything more sophisticated than that, you’re out of luck.
Lastly, if you want to use this tree view to track the progress of your project by their rolled up estimates, Jira’s built in Roadmap is not a great option. You can see how many far along each Epic is in terms of how many issues are complete. But if you want to see how far along each Epic is in terms of % story points complete or % time spent, you won’t be able to achieve this with Jira’s built-in roadmap. You also can’t see far along an entire project or set of issues is in terms of estimate progress from this view. This can make it difficult to track the progress of your entire release.
2) Use Advanced Roadmaps To Get A Jira Tree View Of All Your Issues
Another option for a Jira tree view is Advanced Roadmaps. Advanced Roadmaps offers extra functionality beyond Jira’s built-in Roadmap feature. In Advanced Roadmaps, you’re not limited to your tree only going down to the issue level. You can also see sub-tasks below each level.
You have the option of expanding and contracting each levels with one easy click. Advanced Roadmaps is great if you want to get a big picture overview of your project, but also want the ability to dig into the details. Unlike Jira’s built in Roadmap, Advanced Roadmaps can be configured to zoom in on any set of issues you like. This is great if you want to look at a subset of issues in your project or issues across many different projects.
Another advantage of Advanced Roadmaps is you can also view how far along each issue is in terms of it’s rolled up estimate progress. This is very useful if your team uses estimates to quantify work and is far more accurate than tracking progress in terms of the number of issues completed.
Unfortunately, Advanced Roadmaps also has it’s own limitations. One issue is that it costs $14 per user per month. This can add up quickly if you have a large team. Another issue is it doesn’t work with Next-Gen projects. If your team are using Next-Gen projects this can present a challenge. It also requires some configuration to get up and running. Where Jira’s built in Roadmap works out of the box, Advanced Roadmaps requires some set up. You need to configure it to track the projects or filters you want.
Lastly, you can’t track the estimate progress of an entire set of issues in Advanced Roadmaps. You can track the estimate progress of each issue, but this does not extend to the project or filter level.
3) Use Agile Docs to Get A Jira Tree View Of All Your Issues
If the first two options don’t meet your needs, another great option for getting a tree view of your Jira issues is our own add-on Agile Docs. With Agile Docs, you get a tree view of your issues built-in to each project. Unlike Jira’s built in Roadmap, Agile Docs shows your tree all the way down to the sub-task level. This will allow you to see your tree in it’s entirety. Another advantage of Agile Docs is you can bring up any set of issues using your saved filters. You’re not limited to filtering by status and assignee as you are with Jira’s built in roadmap. Unlike Advanced Roadmaps, you don’t need to do any set up at all to create a tree view which looks across multiple projects or filters.
Agile Docs may not be ideal if you care more about creating a roadmap than you do about visualising your issues. If that’s your primary objective than Jira’s built-in Roadmap is likely a better option. But if you care deeply about having a Jira tree view down to the sub-task level, and want the option to filter that tree using custom filters, Agile Docs is a better fit.
Agile Docs is the only option which supports tracking estimate progress at the project or filter level. This lets you sum Jira story points and time estimates from sub-tasks all the way up to the project or filter level and export to excel. This is an incredibly useful addition for teams which quantify work using story point or time estimates. You can also copy a link to your project or filter and easily share it with team members in Confluence. Or even create a completely custom issue hierarchy.
Conclusion
Using the options above to get a Jira tree view are incredibly useful for seeing the big picture. Being able to see the hierarchal relationships between your issues on a single page is essential for reasoning about your project, making informed product decisions, and keeping track of how far along your release is.