Assigning Sub-Tasks to a Different Team than the Parent Task - Or Workarounds?

[Dan Costello]

I'm aware that having Sub-Tasks inherit their Team setting from their Parent is by design. I understand the logic behind that thinking.

The problem with that logic is that it fails to account for real-world team structures where the responsibility for completing a sub-task exists at the intersection of two different teams. In a multi-disciplinary project, this is the norm, not the exception.

In another thread, someone used the example of a homebuilder. In that example, the "Construction crew" is the team that Jira imagines, but the Electricians and the Plumbers and the Framers are all their own teams who don't work on one house at a time. They all work on multiple houses at a time and it's important to be able to see not just how Construction Crew A is doing, but also how all of the Electricians are doing. And Jira, as it is, cannot do that as far as I'm aware.

I'm aware that there is an open request for this. I cannot comment on that request:
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-88186

Assuming this request is never going to be granted, are there workarounds to this that can be incorporated into an existing project without breaking the existing stuff? If it matters, my employer is on the enterprise plan.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Dan Costello 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

That is a very good question.

At this time there is not an option to create another custom field of type Team that will automatically provide a list of the Teams and allow you to select one. Wouldn't that be a lovely workaround?

Some alternatives to consider:

1. Create User Groups that correlate to your Teams, and add a Group Picker field to you sub-tasks to identify the "assigned" group/Team. Note it is also possible to synchronize Teams to User Groups to keep the memberships the same.
2. Change the item hierarchy you are using, moving everything up a level; i.e. change from using Story/Sub-tasks to using Epic/Story when you need the child to have a different Team than the parent.
3. Use linked items instead of Sub-tasks. The linked items can have a different Team than the "parent" item.