What are Issue Types in JIRA?
JIRA issue types are simply pre-defined templates that assist in categorizing and organizing your work. Think of them as JIRA templates for specific issues. They are designed to help track the type of work and the fields required to proceed with the work.
It is much easier to filter and sort through your work and track progress or even estimate how long it takes for a team to respond to something specific like a bug when you have several issue types.
Additionally, Jira Software provides access to workflows. Think of them as a path your issues take from creation to completion. These workflows comprise of a set of statuses through which the issues move during the lifecycle. You can use issue types to have specific workflows for selected issue types.
Parent and Child Issues
Parent and Child issues define the relationship between the issue types in JIRA.
A parent issue is an issue type that is above the child issues in JIRA. Conversely, a child issue is an issue that comes below the parent issue.
Let’s take an example of this issue hierarchy that has epic, tasks, user stories, sub-tasks, and bugs:
- An epic is a parent issue for stories, tasks, and bugs.
- Stories/tasks can be a parent issue for bugs and subtasks.
- A sub-task can only be a child issue as nothing is below it.
Jira Issue Types Explained
The classification and tracking of various categories, including bugs, tasks, and stories, are facilitated by issue types, which can be customized according to the project requirement. JIRA offers several predefined issues.
Epic
An Epic is an issue that breaks large, complex tasks into manageable pieces, such as user stories or tasks. The idea is to divide the large workload into manageable sections and assign them to the team members.
Epic divides the task into numerous sprints that span over some time.
Let’s say you have an eCommerce revamp project.
The whole scope can be broken down into several categories, such as:
- Improving UI
- Rewriting the content
- Updating the pricing plans
- Replacing the old images with a new image library and so on
The above categories can be referred to as the Epics in JIRA, whereas the smaller tasks below become stories.
While the Epics create the roadmaps for these projects, it does not represent an entire project.
Each of these epics can be assigned to different teams. For instance, improving the UI can be assigned to the UI experts, whereas the content team can look after the rewriting.
The teams can further divide the Epic into the user stories or tasks subsequently.
Story
User stories are written from the user’s perspective and are the smallest features within Epic. User stories define the project through short and simple descriptions in a conversational language.
A good example of a story is considering the feature that a customer will use to get value. For instance, a story can be written as a scenario that follows, “As a user, I want to find a payment button that is clearly transparent and provides a seamless experience.”
Task
A task in project management is a piece of work that needs to be done to complete a story. This includes tasks like research, validation, and implementation. A task can simply be a stepping stone for completing the story.
For example, if a user story is “completing the payment”, the task should then be embedding the link to the checkout page and integrating it with the payment gateway.
Bug
A bug is an issue that restricts the product’s functionalities and its ability to perform tasks. In agile software, bugs can be product issues or quality issues.
Bugs can be detected during the software testing, production, or even after the software has been released. After detection, the bugs are assigned to the developer team as a task.
Example: A bug can be a broken link or a dysfunctional button. When a user clicks on the button, they see an error or a broken web page.
Sub-task
Sub-task issue type falls into the lowest tier of the software development stage. A sub-task is a more manageable and small piece of work that arises by breaking down the user stories, epic, or tasks.
A sub-task is used to complete the tasks.
In a software development project, the team breaks down a feature implementation task into smaller, focused “SUBTASK” issues.
For example, one of these subtasks might be “Write an assignment” for quality check and develop features. In this SUBTASK, the team can focus on creating thorough assignments to validate functionality and maintain code quality.
Issue Type Schemes
Issue type Schemes in JIRA help group issue types. An issue type scheme makes it easier to align the issue types with project objectives and goals. It’s also useful if you would like to reuse certain selections of issue types in different projects.
It is worth noting that only one issue type scheme can be assigned to a project.
By using the issue type scheme for a project, the teams gain more transparency on what issue type can be used for a task.
Issue type schema will depend on the type of project that was selected. For example, Jira Software will have Epics, stories, and sub-tasks. Jira Ervice management, on the other hand, will have change, IT help, incident, new feature, problem, service request, service request with approval, and support issue types.
Default Issue Scheme
Simply said, the default issue type scheme includes all the issue types that are present in all the projects by default unless it is associated with other schemes.
Default issue type schemes include the following issue types by default: epic, story, and sub-task. When you create a new issue type, it will be automatically added to the default scheme type.
There are also a few things to know about the default scheme:
- A project with a unique issue type won’t automatically add to the default scheme
- You can’t delete a default issue type scheme
