How can I get my subtask time estimates to be displayed and be calculated in the backlog view?

Question

Hi all. We use the backlog view to have an overview of the upcoming sprints and to handle people's current and upcoming time allocations. Currently, when I split a task into subtasks, I cannot see the cumulative estimated time of those subtasks, nor do those times appear to be calculated in the overall sprint time estimation calculation. This is disingenuous, as we cannot at a glance see what our work estimates are.

I can open up the task in detail view, and there I see the time breakdown no problem. But our upper management does not use that functionality for their planning, and our regular team members want to use subtasks to split their work. I need to find a way to make these both work together.

I have managed a small workaround via adding the estimates into the card layouts, but as these times dont appear to be tracked, the times arent in the overall sprint calculation. Is there any way I can change this?

Petter Gonçalves · Answer

Hello Janine,

Unfortunately, the board estimation is not measured against Sub-tasks, but only again standard issue types.

This is intended behavior for JIRA, due to the fact that the estimation in sub-tasks can cause confusion if you use it together with the estimation on Standard issues.

That been said, we completely understand that an option to choose which issue types you would like to use to estimate would absolutely give you the functionality you are looking for. That's why we have a feature request created to improve it:

- Sum estimates from sub-tasks in user stories

Feel free to vote and watch the suggestion to increase its priority and also receive notifications about any updates.

Also, there are several workarounds provided on that feature request (and other ones linked) which may apply to your scenario.

Please, search for the word "workaround" in the feature request and check if any of the many workarounds provided better work for your case.