Advanced Roadmaps - Avoid double counting story points in issues AND subtasks

Question

Hello Community - I'm creating an Advanced Roadmap and notice that the story points are double counted in an issue AND subtasks.  So if I had an issue for 24 points, with 3 8-point subtasks, it's showing that the team is planning 48 points instead of 24.  I know I can filter either the issue or its subtasks out, but I want to show those details in the plan.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Disclaimer: I don't work much with AR, so I am making some guesses about why the points are rolling up.

In the Plan configuration you have the option to specify that estimates roll up. I assume you have this option checked.

And I assume you have the Configuration > Scheduling > Estimation option set to Story Points for the plan.

In that case the plan will automatically roll up the values in the built in Story points field from the lowest level of the hierarchy to the highest. Anywhere that you have put story points on "child" issues as well as "parent" issues, but points will get summed up at the next higher level.

Your options are:

1. Disable the Roll-up feature. That will disable the roll-up for the entire hierarchy.

2. Any where that you don't want the story points included in the roll-up, remove the story points value. In this case that would mean removing the story points assigned to subtasks.

3. If you feel you must have a "story point" type value at that level but don't want it counted in the roll-up, then create a custom field for story that information; i.e. "subtask story points". Then move the value in those issues from the "Story points" field to the "subtask story points" field. The AR plan will automatically pick up the values in the built-in Story points field. If you put the value into a different field, then it won't be included in the roll-up.

Kerri Shirey_k0y4ri · Answer

Hello @Trudy P Claspill

Thank you for your response!

I can't say why we're pointing sub-tasks.  I understand it's not essentially 'Agile' to manage work this way, but they're doing it.  Are you saying I could create a custom field in Jira Cloud for 'Subtask story points'?  I'm not understanding how to eliminate those points from being double-counted in the AR calcs.

Appreciate your support!

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Kerri Shirey

Story points are used to estimate items that "stand alone"; i.e. items that can be assigned to sprints. Subtasks can't be assigned to sprints because they are considered a part of their parent issue. Generally you should not be using Story Points for estimation at the subtask level.

So, I must ask what problem are you solving by setting Story Points for subtasks?

If you feel that you must have a "story points" value at the subtask level but want to exclude it from the AR, you could create a custom field for "subtask story points" and use that instead in your subtask issues.