Advanced Roadmap - Custom Work Item Types not Rolling Up Estimates

[Noalen Pell]

In my Advanced Roadmap / Plan - custom work item types other than Story/Task/Bug are not rolling up estimates to the Epic for the timeline.

What can I adjust so they're included?

[Joshua Brock _ Seibert Group_ GmbH]

Hi @Noalen Pell ... welcome! 

Sounds like you figure it out, but great question, as this is a configuration step in Jira Plans that's easy to miss.

For custom work item types to roll up estimates to the Epic on the timeline, my suggestions were originally going to be to check two places in your Plan settings (the gear icon): 

1. Hierarchy configuration — confirm that your custom work item type appears in the hierarchy. If it isn't listed, add it. Plans only rolls up estimates from issue types that are explicitly part of the plan's defined hierarchy.
2. Estimation settings — confirm the same custom type has an estimation method assigned (Story Points, time, etc.). If the field is blank or set to "None," Plans skips it in the rollup entirely.

If both of those look correct and the rollup is still missing, check whether the individual issues actually have estimate values set. Plans skips un-estimated issues in the calculation.

If you're building a deeper custom hierarchy (for example, Features or Enablers sitting between Epics and Stories) and working across multiple teams, it may be worth knowing that this kind of setup tends to get progressively harder to maintain in native Plans as it grows. Each new custom type requires manual hierarchy wiring, and cross-team rollup gets fragile.

Additionally, if your organization is heading toward a scaled agile or SAFe model — multiple teams, ARTs, Program Increments — Agile Hive takes a structurally different approach:

• The full Portfolio Epic → Feature → Story hierarchy is enforced as a native Jira data model, so estimate rollup, status aggregation, and dependency tracking work without per-plan configuration
• PI planning, ART-level visibility, and multi-team coordination are built in rather than assembled from custom workarounds
• Everything stays inside Jira — there's no separate system of record and no sync to maintain

That may be more than you need right now, but worth knowing if the Plans configuration work starts to compound. There's a free trial on the Atlassian Marketplace.

And just in full disclosure, I work at Seibert Group, the team behind Agile Hive.

Hope this helps, and again, welcome!

Joshua
Content Writer & US Representative
Agile Hive and Aura Apps (products of Seibert Group GmbH)

[Ash H_]

Hey @Noalen Pell ,

I'm Ash from Appfire,

Glad you found your way through. 

If you're looking for a more flexible way to visualize these roll-ups, JXL (Jira Sheets Hierarchy) might be a great fit for your workflow. Based on the public documentation, JXL allows you to create custom hierarchies that go beyond the standard Jira levels, and it supports real-time data aggregation. This means you can sum up field values - including estimates - across any level of your hierarchy directly in a spreadsheet-like view. It’s designed to be quite intuitive, so you can see those totals for your custom work item types without needing to jump back and forth between different plan configurations. It’s a very helpful way to get a clear, consolidated view of your project’s progress and resource allocation.

Additionally, BigPicture is a powerful option if you need a more robust Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). It provides a dedicated environment for managing complex project structures where you can define custom task types and see estimate roll-ups automatically calculated within its modules. While JXL is fantastic for quick, sheet-based analysis, BigPicture offers a more comprehensive project management suite that can help you track these custom hierarchies alongside Gantt charts and resource modules, ensuring your estimates are visible
across the entire project lifecycle.

Hope it helps!
Best,
Ash

[Noalen Pell]

With the help of Rovo I realised the work item type being different was a coincidence - it was actually because there was no date set on the child item.