I’m struggling with epic management in our JIRA setup for Salesforce work. Many stories don’t have epics, and our sprints are a mix of bugs and new features across different areas.
Here’s what I’m wondering:
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What’s the best way to group epics? Should we do it by Salesforce object, business process, or something else? It gets tricky when a ticket touches multiple objects or processes.
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Is it a must to link every user story to an epic?
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For sprint planning, should we keep bugs and new features separate or is it okay to mix them?
I’d love to hear some best practices from folks who’ve dealt with this before. Our current setup feels messy and I want to improve our organization.
yo, from my experience, grouping epics by business process works best. it keeps everyone aligned with the big picture. linking stories to epics? not a must, but super helpful for tracking progress. for sprints, we mix bugs and features. usually 70% new stuff, 30% fixes. keeps things balanced. oh, and try using custom fields for extra filtering options. its a game changer for big projects!
Having worked on several Salesforce projects using JIRA, I can share some insights that might help. For epic organization, we found that grouping by business process worked best for us. It kept our focus on delivering value and made it easier to communicate progress to stakeholders.
As for linking stories to epics, we aimed to do this as much as possible, but didn’t stress if a few smaller tasks weren’t linked. The key was ensuring all significant work had a clear home.
In our sprints, we actually found a mixed approach to be most effective. We’d allocate about 70% of our capacity to new features and 30% to bugs and small improvements. This balance helped us make steady progress while keeping technical debt in check.
One thing that really helped us was using JIRA’s custom fields. We created fields for ‘Salesforce Object’ and ‘Business Area’ which we could apply to epics and stories. This gave us additional ways to filter and report on our work, which was invaluable for larger projects.
Remember, the goal is to find a system that works for your team and stakeholders. Don’t be afraid to experiment and adjust as you go along.
From my experience with Salesforce projects in JIRA, I’ve found grouping epics by business process to be most effective. It aligns development with business goals and accommodates cross-object work. As for linking stories to epics, it’s not mandatory but highly beneficial for tracking progress and maintaining context. I’d recommend doing it whenever possible. Regarding sprint planning, I’ve had success with a mixed approach. We typically allocate a percentage of each sprint for bug fixes (usually 20-30%) and the rest for new features. This balance helps maintain product quality while still driving development forward and allows flexibility to adjust to current priorities. One additional tip: consider using JIRA’s ‘Initiative’ feature to group related epics, adding an extra layer of organization, especially useful for large-scale Salesforce implementations or major releases.