Your project's Roadmap is the central home for all epics in your project. This is where you create, manage, and gain insights from your epics. Note that epics will only display on the roadmap, and won't display on your project's board or backlog. 


Roadmaps are only available in next-gen Jira Software projects.

They aren't available in classic projects. If you're unsure, check the bottom of your project sidebar. If you see the Give feedback and Learn more menu items, you're in a next-gen project.

Create epics

To create an epic, select + in the first column of the roadmap. This will create a new epic and add it to the bottom of the list.

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Pro tip

You can also create new epics by hovering your mouse between two existing epics, to create an epic in the middle of the list.


Add issues to epics

There are two ways to add issues to your epics:

On the roadmap

To add an issue, hover over an epic and click + Add a child issue.

On the issue details

Click on an epic to see more details:

  1. Epic color: Change the color of an epic. 
  2. Add a child issue: Use the quick-add button to add the first child issue to your epic.
  3. Add more issues: Once you have one child issue, you can use the + above the list to add more.
  4. Child issues list: View and open all of the child issues for this epic.

Add or change an issue's epic

You can add existing issues to epics, change the epic an issue belongs to, or remove issues from epics from the issue view, board or backlog. Check out Manage epics in next-gen projects to see how.

See the progress of an epic

As work is completed on an epic, you can use the progress bar to quickly see the epic's progress on the roadmap.

To hide or show epic progress, select View > Progress.

The small bar underneath the epic's name if there are issue in the epic. This bar indicates the overall progress of your epic’s issues. It shows the status of any standard issues in your epics, excluding subtasks.

The epic’s progress bar is divided into three segments:

  • The green segment represents issues in a Done status

  • The blue segment represent issues in an In progress status

  • The grey segment represents issues in a To do status

Hover over any segment of an epic's progress bar to see specifically how many issues are in each status category, either in a to-do status, an in-progress status, or a done status.


Manage dependencies between epics

Your team might have one epic that is blocking the progress of another, or two epics that impact one another. The roadmap enables you to visualize dependencies between epics.


Can't create a dependency?

Issue linking is activated by default. But if your issue linking is currently “OFF”, you'll need activate it to create links between issues. Your Jira admin can enable it.

Create dependency links between epics

There are two ways to visualize dependencies on your roadmap.


To create dependencies between epics directly on your roadmap:

  1. Hover over an epic to reveal dots on either side of an epic. 
  2. Drag one of the dots to the epic you want to link it to. 


To create dependencies between epics from the epic issue detail view:

  1. Select an epic on the roadmap.
  2. Select Link issue.
  3. Select either blocks or is blocked by, then select the epic to link.

View details of linked dependencies

Dive into the details of linked epics inside of dependency cards by selecting the dependency line, or the link icon on an epic.

The dependency line will turn red if one of your epics is scheduled to start before a dependent epic will be completed, which signals the potential for delay or risk.


Remove dependencies

To remove a dependency between two epics, select Unlink issue or delete the issue link in the issue detail view.

Learn more