sub task Sprint - I want it to be editable

Question

hi

we are working with Epic,Story and sub tasks, while the sub tasks inherits the Sprint field value from it's parent (Story).
We want to be able to edit the Sprint. (currently it's disabled by default).

The reason for this, is that the sub tasks are in different sprints.

Using Task instead is not an option as there is no hierarchy involved.

If it's not possible, I thought of creating a new issuetype: subtasknew
but can it be in the hierarchy UNDER the Story?

Mykenna Cepek · Answer

I'm curious why your Subtasks are in different Sprints? Is it because the parent Story is taking longer than one Sprint? Or are you actually assigning Subtasks to be completed in different Sprints? Or maybe something else?

Most Agile teams using Jira follow a guideline like "the team strives to complete all the Stories planned for the Sprint". Further, the time estimate for each Story is required to be smaller than the Sprint length.

Any Stories which the team cannot complete in one Sprint is simply too large, and that Story should be split into multiple Stories. This is often part of a "Definition of Ready" - a Story is not ready to be included in a Sprint if it is too big.

Subtasks are normally used to break down the work of a Story into smaller pieces, perhaps that separate people in the team can work on simultaneously. Thus, all the Subtasks would be planned for the Sprint that contains the Story. Jira is actually designed to work this way, as Subtasks inherit the Sprint field from their parent Story.

It could be that some of your Stories should be Epics.

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl) · Answer

To add to what @Mark Segall said, many organizations us Epics as the parent issue that (may) span Sprints.

Mark Segall · Answer

Hi @Ifat Biran and welcome to the community!

Correct Subtasks are intended to be part of their parent and Jira is working with Agile best practices where stories should be small enough to be completed in a single sprint and a story isn't complete until all sub-tasks are complete.  Thus, sub-tasks cannot span to a different sprint than its parent story.

If you're finding that your stories are not completing in a single sprint, I would recommend more scrutiny on story decomposition in sprint planning to see if stories can be broken down into smaller chunks prior to kicking off the sprint.