View Defects at Epic (or Initiative) level in Jira Align

Summary

This article explains how to retrieve Defect details associated with Epics in Jira Align using a custom field and Enterprise Insights.

Pre-requisites

• All Defects should be associated with the stories. 

• Stories should be linked to Features. 

• Features should be linked to Epics/Capabilities.

• Capabilities should be linked to Epics.

Solution

• In general, Defects can be mapped to Stories in Jira Align. However, Features or Epics don't have Defects directly rolled up to them.

• The custom field "Parent work item custom field on features" located under Jira Settings > Jira Setup, may be helpful at times if enabled for Defects in Jira side to filter this information easily. 

• However, it doesn't always provide accurate information. For instance, if a Feature is linked to a Capability, which in turn is linked to an Epic, the custom field in Jira will point to the Capability instead of the Epic.

• Using the below Enterprise Insights query, we can pull the Defects associated with a specific Epic. This is only possible if the parent-to-child relationship is established correctly. 

  select D.[Defect ID], s.[Story ID], F.[Feature ID], E.[Epic ID] from [current_dw].Epic as E inner join [current_dw].Feature as F on E.[Epic ID] = F.[FK Epic ID] inner join [current_dw].Story as S on S.[FK Feature ID] = F.[Feature ID] inner join [current_dw].Defect as D on S.[Story ID]= D.[FK Story ID] where E.[Epic ID] = <Epic ID>