Looking for Agile Setup Help - Epics, Sprints, Stories, Subtasks

[itmailbox]

I've been asked to help set up an Agile Workflow with the following levels in Workfront: Epics, Sprints, Stories, Subtasks.  Epics would be for larger categories of work over long periods of time (up to several months or more), Sprints would be 1-2 month efforts, Stories would be large chunks work within a Sprint, and sometimes we need to add sub tasks to a Story.  I can do this in WF, but only if I make the Epic level a Project in WF, and when I do that, I lose the ability to see all my Epics in one view (reporting doesn't support Agile views as far as I can tell).  I've also tried using the Agile Team and Iterations, but it seems like there are only 3 organizational levels (Iteration, Story, SubTask--projects aren't easily viewed).  Has anyone out there set up their Agile with Epics, Sprints, Stories, Subtasks, and would you be willing to share with me some info about how you're managing it?  Thank you for any suggestions you can provide.

[Madalyn_Destafney · Accepted solution]

Hi there, a couple thoughts here:
- Have you looked into using Boards? WF has been rolling out new Boards enhancements over the past couple releases, including the capability to assign 'sub cards' on 'cards' (tasks), and you can also import custom data as your inventory of possible items to then include in your Board (i.e. all tasks/requests from XYZ projects or request queues). I don't know when, but at some point Boards will become the Agile tool/method in WF.

- If not using Boards, have you considered to have this hierarchy?
Epics = Portfolios
Sprints = Programs
Stories = Projects
Subtasks = Tasks
OR
Epics = Programs
Sprints = Projects
Stories & Subtasks = Tasks & Subtasks (make any task that has a subtask a parent/bolded task in those projects).
- Lastly, something else our Agile team found helpful was simply modifying their View when in the Stories or Iterations pages. You can pull in other columns like Project name, Program ID (which you can change to Program Name in text mode), etc.

[itmailbox]

Thank you for the suggestions.  The boards seem helpful on their own, but don't tie to the Agile Team view (where you can show the burndown chart, assign points, etc.), so they seem disconnected from other Agile features.   Regarding your suggested org structure, it would work to set it up the way you describe, but it's a lot of admin to create a portfolio for each Epic, a program for each Sprint, and a project for each story. That's a lot of setup each time new work is started. And if we did it that way, there's no way to visualize it in the Agile Team view (as far as I can tell).  So we're left with standard reporting (again, as far as I can tell, there's no burndown reports across projects).  One thing our team likes about Agile is it offers a quick way to view your stories/boards and track progress visually as work is completed.  Would you be willing to share more about your last comment, about modifying the view when in Stories or Iterations? Thanks again for any info you can share.

[Madalyn_Destafney]

I'm referring to when you're in the Stories tab of an Agile team, you can revise your View/Grouping to pull in more info to see at a glance, like project name, program name, or other custom form info.

[itmailbox]

This is very helpful, thank you.  I think this answers my question, because here I can use the Project as my Epic, the Iteration as my Sprint, and then the Stories and any sub tasks or issues fall under the Sprint. Now I can send staff to one location to see the whole hierarchy at once.  Also, it's pretty easy to admin this, with just a few projects/Epics that get pre-created, and then everything else gets managed under the context of the "Agile Team" Iterations/Sprints. Thank you for your suggestions.  Are using this actively, or some workflow like this, within your organization?  Would you ever be willing to discuss it for 1/2 hour on a Teams/Zoom call at your convenience?

[Madalyn_Destafney]

Hi, happy to connect to help you brainstorm. Our Web team is an Agile team in WF, our other teams within Marketing are not. So I don't work in it daily with them but I'm the one who helped them set up their View and our overall structure/hierarchy as our sys admin. 
You can private message me here in Experience League and we'll find a time to connect maybe next week (I'm EST).