Within Jira in Agile Mode. Tracking of Story Point Progress

[Ian Parsonage]

When a requirement is 3, 5 or 8 Story points and cannot be sensibly broken down, I am looking for a way of capturing that say 2SP has been completed.  Is there a way to report %Complete on a Requirement or Subtask and then capture that in a report?

[Davit Mkrtchyan - Be On Time]

Hi Ian  @Ian Parsonage -

I totally understand the urge to see a progress bar. It feels safer and gives a sense of control when a task is large.

But here is a hard truth about Story Points: they are a measure of relative complexity and effort, not a linear unit of measurement like hours or centimeters.

When we try to capture that "2 out of 5 SP are done", we are treating points like hours. But points do not work that way. In most cases, the last 1 SP of a task contains 80 percent of the risk, the hardest bugs, and the most complex integration work. Tracking "percent complete" on a story point is often a vanity metric - it looks good on a report, but it does not actually tell you if you will hit the deadline.

If a requirement "cannot be sensibly broken down", it is usually a red flag. It means the task is likely too large for a single sprint.

However, if you are managing a large-scale project where you absolutely need to see progress on a "macro" level without guessing percentages, the professional approach is to move from Story Points to comparing Actuals vs Planned.

Instead of asking "how many points are done", you look at how many actual hours have been logged against the planned estimate. This gives you a factual, data-driven view of progress.

I work with Be on Time, an Atlassian Marketplace partner, and we built a tool called MSP Planner for Jira specifically for this. It allows you to connect actual worklogs from Jira to your planned schedule, so you can see real progress based on effort rather than subjective point-percentages.

You can find it here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/3162894022/msp-planner-for-jira

Regardless of the tool, moving away from "percent complete" and toward binary delivery or actuals-based tracking is the first step to making your planning deterministic instead of optimistic.

Hope this helps you escape the percent-complete trap!

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi  @Ian Parsonage 

For custom hierarchies, roll ups for time tracking , story points, numeric values to parent, if you are open to try out a mktplace app, take a look at,

Agile Tools

The app allows you to view your issues in a hierarchy list view with roll up of story points at Epic level and at each parent level. There is also %complete bar at each parent level to track the progress.

Disclaimer : I am one of the app team member

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @Ian Parsonage,

Story points estimate the size and complexity of a backlog item. In Agile, a 5-point story isn't considered "2 points complete" along the way; it's either Done or In Progress. Once the story is fully completed, the burndown reflects all 5 story points. That's how agile is designed to work and how Jira implements story point tracking.

If you need intermediate visibility, the recommended approach is to track progress using subtasks or remaining work. For example, you can report progress based on the number of completed subtasks or estimate subtasks in hours.

If you still want to track partial story points, one option would be to:

1. split the (larger) stories into subtasks,
2. assign story points to those subtasks (instead of main story)
3. use an app from the Atlassian Marketplace that supports reporting at the subtask level.

If you're open to using an app, our Great Gadgets app provides everything you need for tracking and reporting.

Wit this approach you could display progress of requirements (epics in my example) by sum of story points including subtasks. 

Or maybe sprint burdown chart by sub-tasks:

Similar to this, with Great Gadgets you can display release burndown, epic burdown, velocity chart and many other useful metrics based on subtasks SPs.

See also these articles: 

• https://community.atlassian.com/forums/App-Central-articles/How-to-create-a-Sprint-Burdown-Chart-in-Jira-with-subtasks/ba-p/3142644 
• https://community.atlassian.com/forums/App-Central-articles/9-gadgets-for-a-powerful-Scrum-dashboard-in-Jira/ba-p/1683063

Danut.