Top Level

The Role of the Top-Level Space

The top-level space achieves popularity in large organisations because it creates a necessary work hierarchy above the traditional team-level Epics, Stories, and Tasks. Organizations using Jira Premium or Enterprise often configure custom high-level issue types, such as "Initiative," "Program," or "Theme," which reside only in this central space. The issues in this top-level space do not represent the work itself, but rather the strategic goals that the underlying team-level work contributes to. Team-level Epics from various development spaces are then linked to these high-level Initiatives using the Parent field. This structure allows leadership to answer a critical question: "How is the organization progressing on its biggest priorities?" without having to sift through thousands of individual team tasks.

Centralised Visibility and Alignment

This approach is essential for providing enterprise visibility and maintaining strategic alignment. By utilising the top-level space in conjunction with tools like Advanced Roadmaps (Plans), executives and program managers can visualise a portfolio roadmap, seeing how all active team-level work rolls up into the few critical Initiatives or OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). This centralised view facilitates crucial, high-level decisions regarding budgeting, capacity allocation, and dependency management across the entire product ecosystem. Without a single, dedicated top-level space, large organisations would be forced to manage strategic alignment using complex spreadsheets or external tools, sacrificing the real-time data integrity that makes Jira so powerful for day-to-day work. It acts as the single source of truth for the organization's strategic intent, while still allowing the delivery teams the autonomy to manage their work within their own individual spaces.