Introduction

The work item hierarchy is viewable in all work items in Jira projects added to the SAFe® hierarchy via My Organization.

It is either already available in an work item’s detail view or the hierarchy can be added by clicking the SAFe® Hierarchy button in the ‘Apps’ drawer of the work item view toolbar.

The core purpose of work item hierarchy links is two-fold and can be understood as follows:

• Provides the context of which higher-level work that the work of a team or an ART contributes to.

• Defines the visualization of ART feature swimlanes on the team boards.

Open

Constraints of Agile Hive Work Item Hierarchy

The work item hierarchy link unveils how an work item in a project on one of the upper SAFe® hierarchy layers is being broken down into work at a lower level. It always displays the current work item’s hierarchical links (parent work item + children) if available.

• Parent-Child Relationships (general):

  • It links work items hierarchically, that are located on adjacent layers in the ‘My Organization’ project hierarchy.

  • Each work item can have exactly one parent work item (except for work items in Portfolio-level projects). This is always a one-to-one relationship.

  • Each work item can have multiple child work items linked to it (except for work items in Team-level projects). This is always a one-to-many relationship.

• Linking ART-level Projects:

  • When linking work items from ART-level projects to a parent, users can bypass the Large Solution layer (if configured) and create a direct hierarchical link to any Portfolio-level work item.

• Objectives Linking:

  • Objectives can only be linked to other Objectives.

  • Whether an work item is classified as an ‘Objective’ depends on the work type mapping for the respective project. You can view this by navigating to the project in Agile Hive > Project Settings > Issue Types.

Extended Information

In case you need more detailed information on Agile Hive Work Item Hierarchy / SAFe® Hierarchy, please also refer to the pages listed below: