How can I automate updating the story-point estimate of a parent issue when a child issue is closed?

Question

Hi Everyone,

We would like to automatically have the parent issue's story-point estimate update (reduce in number) whenever a linked child issue is closed .

[ SPECIFIC EXAMPLE ]:
- we create a parent issue with a story-point estimate of 5 
- we create 5 child issues, each with a story-point estimate of 1 
- we complete && close one of the child issues (it had a story-point estimate of 1)

[ ISSUE ]: 
- we have to manually update the remaining story-points of parent issue (from 5 --> 4)

[ TO BE RESOLVED ]:
- is there a way using the Automation feature to have the parent issue automatically reflect the change in remaining story-points as a result of closing the child issue?

THANK-YOU

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @[deleted]  -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

Changing the story points of a parent item (which has children) will lose the history of what was the orginal understanding of the parent.  That was your "estimate" at the time of refinement and planning.

If you want to track the remaining work, consider adding a new custom field to track that value, and then use the automation rule method suggested by @Hana Kučerová  to adjust the remaining work value.  In this way, you can also *increase* the remaining work when new items are added to the parent.  Consider taking information about original estimates, remaining work, and sub-task changes into your retrospectives to learn how to improve in estimating and decomposing work items.

Thanks, and best regards,

Bill

Hana Kučerová · Answer

Hi @[deleted]

welcome to the community!

Yes, this should be possible, you can create the automation rule like this:

* WHEN: Issue is transitioned to Done (status for resolved issues)
* FOR: Epic or Parent (I don't know what it is relevant in your case)
* THEN: Edit issue fields - Story Points, set value to:
{{issue.Story Points.minus(triggerIssue.Story points)}}