Kanban board, grouped by epic, doesn't show sub-tasks under their epic.

[Kevin H.]

Hello! We are using Jira Cloud with Project Type = 'Jira - software project'. We use epics with tasks, and some tasks have sub-tasks. I just discovered that it works great for our team, when doing stand-ups and such, to view the kanban board with "Group: Epic" — so that epics appear in ranked order, as expandable/collapsible "swim lanes" on the board. Awesome! 🎉

However, the sub-tasks are appearing at the bottom under "No Epic," and this is not expected. I read this and some other similar threads. Of course I understand that a work item can have only one "parent" work item. The parent of the sub-task is the task; and the parent of the task is the epic; and "the sub-task doesn't connect directly to the epic."

Still, for this use case, if a sub-task is in Task_N, and Task_N is in Epic_X, then of course we would expect the sub-task to appear on the kanban board (when grouped by epic) within the Epic_X group. Please help? Is there something I can do now, to get what we want? Or, can I request this change? Much appreciated!

[Kevin H. · Accepted solution]

Oh, the DATA-1471 task itself (parent of those two sub-tasks, child of the epic) was in 'Backlog' status, and so not appearing on the board.

Once I changed the status of DATA-1471 to 'In Work', it started appearing on the board; and then its sub-tasks moved into the DATA-1470 swim lane, as expected. So that resolves it — for a sub-task to appear in the epic's swim lane, the task (which resides "between" the epic and the sub-task) must also appear on the board. Thanks again @Trudy Claspill et al.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Kevin H_ 

Is your project Team Managed or Company Managed? Get that information from the Type column on the Projects page, which is accessed from Projects > More Projects > View All Projects.

When I tried to replicate this with a Company Managed Software project using a Kanban board the Sub-task showed up in the swimlane for the Epic that was its "grandparent".

The same was true in a Company Managed Software project Scrum board.

For Team Managed Software projects, both scrum and kanban boards, subtasks display only when the Group option is set to Subtask. They won't display as cards on the board when the Group option is Epics.

Can you provide a screen image showing us what you are seeing?

[Kevin H.]

Hi Trudy, thank you for your help. I checked and it is "Company-managed software." Nice to see it is working as I'd expect, for you.

In my screenshots below, you can see (a) DATA-958 and DATA-1407 are sub-tasks of DATA-1471. And (b) DATA-1471 is a task in the DATA-1470 epic. And (c) my board has a swim lane for the DATA-1470 epic — within its swim lane we can see another task, DATA-1126. But DATA-958 and DATA-1407 aren't showing in the swim lane for the DATA-1470 epic; instead they appear under the "No Epic" swim lane.

[Kevin H.]

Oh, the DATA-1471 task itself (parent of those two sub-tasks, child of the DATA-1470 epic) was in 'Backlog' status, and so not appearing on the board.

[Varsha Joshi]

Hi @Kevin H_ 

AFIK sub tasks will not show up on either kanban or scrum boards. We had to be creative and have a task assigned to the person who is working that specific task. This provided us the visibility on the board. Hope this helps.