How to sum up the story points from sub-tasks to epics

Question

I am using the automation template provided by Jira. The name of it is "When the story point estimate for an issue is changed → sum up story point estimates in Parent".

The issue type hierarchy in my Jira is:
Level 0: Initiative
 - Level 1: Epic
 - - Level 2: User Story
 - - - Level 3: Sub-tasks

When I update the story point in sub-task, I find that only the story point in user story is updated. The epic and initiative are not changed. Are there any ideas on it? I hope that, when I update the lowest level type, all level 0 to level 2 will be updated automatically.

Another concern is, in the sprint velocity chart, will it sum up the story points in sub-tasks, user story and epic all together? Or just the points in sub-tasks? I am wondering if the points will be calculated several times if I run the automation rule.

Many thanks!

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @Xinwen

I'm not an Automation expert, but you'll almost certainly need to update not just the story in your automation rule, but also update the epic and the initiative. Maybe this could be a good starting point.

Alternatively, if you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, there's a number of apps available that specialise on calculating sum-ups for you. E.g., you may want to have a look at the app that my team and I are working on: JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including support for (configurable) issue hierarchies and sum-ups. With these, you can build a view like e.g. this in just a couple of clicks:

This is for an epic/story/sub-task hierarchy, but you could easily add an initiative level, too. Note how the sum-ups update live as you enter the story points. You can also configure different sum-up styles (like min, max, average, etc.), sum up any other issue fields, etc. etc.

This all just works - there's no scripting or automation whatsoever required.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

Danut M [StonikByte] · Answer

Hi @Xinwen,

Perhaps these existing topics help:

* Sum up story points to an epic 
* How to sum up story points for initiative?

But why do you need this? What is your end goal?

If you need this for creating a report about epics or initiatives completion, be aware that there are apps (plugins) on Atlassian Marketplace that can provide reports or gadgets that display this info without any administrative work. For example, our Great Gadgets app offers a Pivot Table & Pivot Chart gadget that can calculate and display the sum of story points (including the ones from sub-tasks) for epics or initiatives.

Danut.