DV-20
Epic With No Child Issues
Discipline
Default severity: medium
ProcessMetricsQuality
What it detects
An Epic has been in an active or post-planning status for longer than the configured grace period with no child features or stories linked — the Epic is undivided, unplannable, and undeliverable.
Detection formula
IF issue.type = config.workflow.epic_type AND issue.status NOT IN config.workflow.initial_statuses AND COUNT(child_issues) = 0 AND time_in_active_or_later > config.discipline.epic_decompose_grace_days // default: 7d THEN FLAG undecomposed_epicExamples in practice
- Assignee, field, hierarchy, or sprint hygiene rules are violated on active work.
- Issues miss mandatory fields or ownership while still in progress.
- A team shows an epic has been in an active or post-planning status for longer than the configured grace period with no child features or stories linked while epic type is set to Configured per workspace.
Suggested response
Enforce assignee, field, hierarchy, and sprint hygiene rules your team agreed on.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
An Epic has been in an active or post-planning status for longer than the configured grace period with no child features or stories linked — the Epic is undivided, unplannable, and undeliverable.
Why it matters
When "Epic With No Child Issues" keeps appearing, the team is signalling a repeatable process gap. Left unexamined, the pattern hides where work really stalls and makes improvement metrics harder to trust.
What you can achieve
Enforce assignee, field, hierarchy, and sprint hygiene rules your team agreed on.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Epic With No Child Issues" from firing again?
- What do the cited issues have in common — same root cause or same workaround?
- Who owns the two-week experiment and how will we verify on the next import?
Run this rule against your own tracker data with Flow Analyzer.