Break Down Stories

Rally allows you to create parent-child relationships between your user stories. This is useful in situations where a single user story cannot be completed in an iteration or release. In such a scenario, the user story can be broken up into several child user stories, which act as milestones towards completing the larger feature or initiative. Use parent and child user stories when your team needs to complete a large feature or project that will span multiple timeboxes.

A parent story is also known as an epic story. Parent stories can have single or multiple levels.

Topics contained in use story hierarchies:

• Managing parent-child story hierarchies
• Creating new child user stories
• Associating existing user stories as children
• Bulk associating user stories with the Backlog page
• Removing parent-child associations
• Deleting story hierarchies
• Story Map app
• Viewing parent-child hierarchies
• Children summary page views
• Hierarchy view on User Stories page
• Story Burnup chart
• Story Burndown chart
• Epic Progress app

Managing parent-child story hierarchies

You can create new child user stories from an existing story to create a parent, or you can associate existing user stories together to form this relationship.

Creating new child user stories

Create a child user story from any of the following locations:

Associating existing user stories as children

To create a parent-child relationship between two existing user stories:

1. Locate the user story that you want to designate as the child.
2. Open an editor window for the user story.
3. In the editor window, click the magnifying glass icon next to the Parent field. A chooser window appears.
   
4. You may search, or sort the ID, Name, and Project fields to locate the story you want to set as the parent. You may also filter by the ID and Project fields.
5. Once the story you want to assign is found, select the radio button to the left of the story ID.
6. Select Choose. The story name will now display next to the Parent field.
7. Select Save & Close, Save & New, or Save to confirm the edit.

Associating multiple stories as children

Using the Backlog page, you may set several user stories as children of a common parent story in one action. To associate multiple stories:

1. Navigate to the Backlog page.
2. Select more than one work item by placing a check mark in the check box on each row. The gear menu will switch to bulk edit mode .
3. Click the bulk edit mode gear menu and select Edit... An editor window displays.
4. Select the Parent field from the drop down in the editor.
5. Enter the FormattedID into the text field next to the drop down selector. Rally will attempt to verify the ID of the parent story.
6. When the parent story is verified, the icon will activate. Click this icon to apply the changes.
7. A confirmation message displays at the top of the Backlog page.

Removing parent-child associations

To remove the parent-child link between two user stories:

1. Locate the child user story, from the pair you want to disassociate.
2. Open an editor window for the user story.
3. In the editor window, click the red X icon, next to magnifying glass icon by the Parent field. The parent story name no longer displays next to the field.
4. Select Save & Close, Save & New, or Save to confirm the edit.
5. The child story is now independent of the former parent.

Deleting user story hierarchies

When you no longer need a parent story and its children, deleting the top parent story will remove the entire hierarchy from your workspace.

To delete a parent story from the User Stories summary page, use the  row action icon.

To delete a parent story from a user story detail page, click the Actions menu button and select Delete.

Story Map app

You can use the Story Map app to create parent-child story hierarchies. This is an alternative to the methods above, allowing child stories to be assigned, ranked, and re-parented on the same page.

Viewing parent-child hierarchies

You can use multiple pages and views to see the relationships between parent and child user stories.

Children user stories summary view

You can use the children summary view to see all child stories for a given parent. This is useful for tracking the progress of a single large feature or initiative.

To access the children summary view, click the Children link from the sidebar of the detail page for the parent story.

Hierarchy view on User Stories page

You can use the hierarchy view setting on the User Stories page under the Plan tab to see multiple story hierarchies in the same view. This is useful for viewing multiple features or initiatives at once.

The hierarchy view is enabled by default on the User Stories page. Use the icon, next to the Views: drop-down menu to enable hierarchy view on the page.

Story Burnup chart

The Story Burnup chart is useful for showing the completed work for a large feature or initiative in chart form. Unlike standard burnup charts, this view can span across multiple releases.

Story Burndown chart

The Story Burndown chart is useful for showing the remaining work for a large feature or initiative in chart form. Unlike standard burndown charts, this view can span across multiple releases.

Epic Progress app

You can use the Epic Progress app to view the distribution of child user stories across iterations.