Customize relationships between work items to improve project management efficiency.
Type relationships
Alibaba Cloud DevOps Projex supports three types of relationships between work items.
Relationships
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Parent-child relationship: A one-to-many directional relationship where a work item can have only one parent but multiple children. A child is part of its parent. For example, you can break down a large requirement into several child requirements to be delivered as different modules.
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Dependency relationship: A many-to-many directional relationship where a work item can depend on multiple items and be a dependency for multiple items. A dependent item cannot be completed until the item it depends on is complete. For example, a ticket may depend on a product requirement, meaning the ticket can only be closed after the requirement is delivered.
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Related relationship: A many-to-many non-directional relationship where a work item can be associated with multiple work items. For example, a requirement can be related to other requirements, defects, documents, or test cases.
The Full-view Diagram on the work item details page displays all related items.
Relationship automation
Automation rules can link the statuses and fields of related items. For more information, see the following topics:
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Parent-child relationship: See Automatic Linkage for Parent-child Relationships.
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Dependency relationship: See Automatic Linkage for Dependency Relationships.
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Related relationship: See Automatic Linkage for Related Relationships.
Custom relationship settings
Organization administrators can define custom relationship types for different collaboration scenarios. For example, you can create a new relationship where a defect is the parent item type and a requirement is the child item type.
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Edit and create relationships: You can edit existing relationships or create new ones. When you edit or create a relationship, the system checks for duplicates. This ensures that only one relationship of the same type exists between any two work item types. In the left navigation pane, select Inter-type Relationship. Click Create, select the Parent-child Relationship type, and enter a Relationship Name, such as 'Custom Relationship'.
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Enable and disable relationships: Disabling a relationship does not affect existing links between work items, but you can no longer create new links of that type. For example, if you disable the related relationship between requirements and defects, existing links remain, but you can no longer add new ones.
On the Type Relationship Settings page, click the Disabled tab to view a list of disabled relationships. In the Actions column, click Enable Relationship to re-enable the relationship.
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Delete relationships: When you try to delete a relationship, the system checks if any work items are using it and warns you if it is in use. If you confirm the deletion, all corresponding links between work items are also deleted. System-initialized relationships cannot be deleted.
A confirmation message warns that deleting the relationship permanently removes all related work item data and cannot be undone. Click Delete to confirm, or click Cancel.