Our alumnus Nick Muldoon published a brilliant blog that is helpful to anyone who is looking to spread Agile upwards in their organisation: Visualising Epics and Dependencies. I became introduced to this by a support inquiry about the reporting part of the process:

After reading the blog, I inferred that what's going on here is that the reporter had instructed her users to use the Epic Status field to track the status of an Epic, instead of workflow status. This is absolutely the intended use, as we want epics to be generally unconstrained by the JIRA applications workflow process. The unfortunate side effect of this is that the Workflow Transitions that drive the Control Chart never occur.

We're going to create an Epic workflow that will allow us to transition Epics and continue to use the Epic Status field as the source of truth about an Epic's condition, without requiring duplicate effort during a transition.

Preparation:

Make sure that you are clear on which Workflow Statuses map to which Epic Statuses, and that they are created prior to starting this exercise. In addition, you'll need the JIRA applications Suite Utilities.

• Workflow status describes how to manage workflow statuses
• Configuring a Custom Field - as Epic Status is a custom field, it is configured using these instructions
• JIRA Suite Utilities is available through the Marketplace.

1. Step-by-step guide, Section 1: Creating the New Workflow
2. Go to Administration > Issues > Workflows
3. Click on Add Workflow
4. Give your Workflow a name and description
5. Click Diagram to enter Design View
6. If you want to use the default initial step, skip to step 9.
7. Click on Add Existing Status > Select your initial status from the menu
8. Select the Create transition
9. Click on Post Functions > Add a Post Function
10. Select Update Issue Custom Field
11. Select Epic Status and type in the name of the Epic Status desired
12. If you chose to use an initial status other than the default in step 7, the next two steps will link the Create transition to it. If you did not, skip to step 13.
    1. Click Edit 
    2. Select the Destination Step that matches your preferred initial step
13. Click on the workflow's name in the Breadcrumbs to return to the workflow, then click Diagram to return to Design mode
    1. If you've created a new initial step in Step 5, you can Remove the unused default step now. Otherwise, continue to step 14.
14. Select your initial status, then click Add a Global Transition: 
15. Give your transition a name and description. If you want users to view information or input data, you can select a Screen to be displayed.
16. Repeat steps 9-11.
17. To add additional Statuses, repeat steps 7-17.

Step-by-step guide, Section 2: Associating the Workflow with the Epic Issue Type

1. Go to Administration > Issues > Workflow Schemes
2. Click Edit for the workflow associated with your project
3. Select Add Workflow > Add Existing and then choose your new workflow
4. Select the Epic issue type
5. 新しいワークフローを [公開] します。

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