Are subtasks good to use in Jira Service Management?

[Maura Swart]

Several years ago, my company was told by a Jira consultant to avoid the use of subtasks (and I don't remember all the reasons). I now work at a different company and we're thinking of using subtasks in JSM. Anyone have experience/knowledge (good or bad) to share about using subtasks in JSM?

[Mikael Sandberg · Accepted solution]

Hi @mjswart,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

It all depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to divide the work needed between people on the same team/within the same project then yes, sub-tasks can be a good use. But then again, it all depends on what you are try do. 

[Mikael Sandberg]

At my previous job we used sub-tasks for onboarding/off-boarding tasks to begin with, but then transitioned to use tasks instead because we wanted to limit who had access to the HR project and move the tasks to the projects that the different teams were using and using linked work items instead.

[Maura Swart]

The initial goal is to use subtasks to divide work within a single team/project which sounds like a good fit for subtasks. Thank you for sharing an example use case where subtasks were not a good fit. This is helpful information to consider when we come up with more use cases for our implementation of JSM.

[Matteo Vecchiato · Accepted solution]

Hi @mjswart ,

There isn't any contraindications to use sub-taks, mainly to split a request in many parts, to assign piece of works to different users and so on. The sub-tasks have the advantage that allow to sum worklogs.

The main point to consider is that sub-tasks are part of the work item, without the parent work item, the sub-task doesn't exists and can't be separated.

As told by @Mikael Sandberg , sub-tasks couldn't be created in different project.

I hope it helps.

[Maura Swart]

Thank you for additional information beyond what @Mikael Sandberg shared. I will share your statement "without the parent work item, the sub-task doesn't exists and can't be separated" with the team leader because I think it gives a good perspective for them to consider when deciding whether or not to use subtasks within a request.

Also, I believe subtasks are not visible to the customer, so this is something else to remember when using them.