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Roll up sub-task estimates to the story

Aniket Kulkarni_fp8xgc

I found a lot of threads around this, but none helped for Jira-cloud variant, so asking again here.

We recently moved from Jira software to cloud variant. I want to rollup subtask estimates to the story, but it doesn't work. I went to every story and switched on old-view (new view somehow doesn't even show the option), and then enabled 'include sub-tasks' option.

It shows rolled up estimate here, but not in the sprint.

How can I achieve this? It would be very cumbersome to estimate both stories and subtasks as well as log work for both.

(Also, before anyone suggests, board settings->card layout is already configured to show summation estimates and remaining time values. It doesn't seem to have any effect in cloud Jira).

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

If you are doing scrum, your estimates would not be being placed on sub-tasks. Jira is pretty strong on doing estimates and velocity according to scrum principles, and scrum has nothing to say about sub-tasks.

In scrum, you tell your PO and others which stories you are going to try to deliver in a sprint. At the end of the sprint, you report (burn down, or up) on what you said you would deliver. If a story is done, you delivered, if it's not, then you didn't.

Breaking a story up into pieces can be incredibly useful. But your estimates for scrum are useless on subtasks. The story is done, or it is not. It doesn't matter how far through the subtasks you've got - any of them open, you're not done, so you can't burn down (or up).

Aniket Kulkarni_fp8xgc

Does this mean logged work for subtasks also will not roll up to stories? If yes, then what is the point of having 'include sub-tasks' option for stories?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Yes and no.

There's a long historical story here which I keep meaning to write up as an article so I can point to it.

The current ending of the story is that time tracking is handled differently by plain Jira and Jira software.

Your first screenshot shows estimates and times rolling up from the sub-tasks into the story. That's doing what you expect.

However, Scrum (and for that matter Kanban) do not have estimates at sub-task level, as I explained in my answer above. So you don't get that roll-up in sprints, it's incorrect.

Aniket Kulkarni_fp8xgc

Thanks @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

I think I get why it is done this way by JIRA, despite so many forums where people are asking for almost the way I was expecting it to work (I saw many of those threads after I posted my question here).

Here's what I decided to do - Create EPICs and stories for sprints, create subtasks for stories, and then estimate stories (subtasks will come handy in creating the final estimate for the story). Then we would use subtasks to log work against during the sprint. I have added summation used time field to issue screen, so subtasks would roll up logged work hours to the parent story. Given subtasks are still logged work against them, it also helps in the subsequent sprint to see which subtasks took more time, which took less, etc., and helps refine estimate for the subsequent sprint and similar story in the future. I tested this with test stories, and seem to work well. It's also getting us close to the ideal stage of seeing a story as a logical work unit.

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