Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a Jira dashboard app that helps teams visualize work-item hierarchy, status, and relationships in a clear and structured format.
Display work as a parent-child hierarchy, inspect linked work items and dependencies, or create a detailed table with custom columns. The app can represent multiple Jira hierarchy levels, from initiatives and themes to epics, stories, tasks, bugs, and subtasks, making complex project structures easier to understand and review.
The app helps you answer questions such as:
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How is the project broken down into initiatives, epics, tasks, and subtasks?
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Which work items belong to each epic or portfolio-level initiative?
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What is the current status of each item in the hierarchy?
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Which parent items contain unfinished work?
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How are work items connected through Jira links?
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Which items block, depend on, duplicate, or relate to other work?
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What work was included in the latest or previous sprint?
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What is the linked issues/work items status?
Key features
Two visualization modes
Choose the perspective that matches the information you want to analyze:
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Hierarchy View: Displays work in a parent-child structure, such as initiatives, themes, epics, stories, tasks, bugs, and subtasks.
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Linked Work Items View: Displays the work items from the selected scope together with their linked work items and current statuses.
Use Hierarchy View to understand project decomposition and scope. Use Linked Work Items View to inspect dependencies and other relationships between work items.
Multi-level Jira hierarchy
Display multiple hierarchy levels in a single view, including:
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Initiatives or themes
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Epics
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Stories
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Tasks
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Bugs
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Subtasks
Additional levels above epics can be displayed when they are configured in the Jira hierarchy.
This allows teams to move from a high-level portfolio item down to the detailed work required to deliver it.
Configurable link types
Choose which Jira link relationships should be displayed:
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All link types
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Only selected link types
This allows you to focus the view on relevant relationships, such as blockers and dependencies, without displaying unrelated links.
Configurable linked-item depth
Choose how many levels of linked work items should be displayed.
The gadget supports up to five levels, allowing you to explore relationships beyond the first directly linked item while controlling the size and complexity of the report.
Linked-item counts
See the number of linked items associated with each link type.
This provides a quick indication of how many blocking, dependent, related, duplicated, or otherwise linked items exist around a work item.
Tree and table display modes
Choose how the results should be presented:
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Tree view: Displays work items in a compact structure with their key, summary, and status.
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Table with custom columns: Displays the work items in a structured table with the Jira fields you select.
Tree view is useful for quickly understanding hierarchy and relationships. Table view is useful when more detailed work-item information is required.
Custom table columns
Select the Jira fields that should appear as columns in the table view.
Multiple data sources
Create a WBS report using:
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A saved Jira filter
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A JQL query
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A sprint selected from a Jira board
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One or more epics
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One or more portfolio-level work items, such as initiatives or themes
These options allow you to visualize anything from one epic or sprint to a multi-project program or portfolio initiative.
Status-category filtering
Choose which work items should be included according to their current Jira status category:
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To Do
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In Progress
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Done
Current status visibility
Display the current status of each work item directly in the hierarchy, linked-work-item view, or table.
This makes it easier to identify which parts of an epic, initiative, sprint, or dependency chain are still To Do, currently In Progress, or already Done.
Cross-project reporting
Use a saved filter or JQL query containing work from multiple Jira projects.
This allows the gadget to visualize program-level hierarchies, cross-team initiatives, shared dependencies, and relationships that extend beyond a single project.