Estimating stories, why?

Question

Maybe I do it incorrectly but when I plan a new sprint, I click on the "New issue", select "Story" and the new sprint. But JIRA wants me to estimate the story - which I do not understand, I estimate subtasks as estimating story does not make sense to me.

luke_majewski · Answer

Because typically you do not estimate a story down at the task level until you are in sprint planning.  If you are estimating stories at that level of detail as soon as it is created I imagine you have a very shallow backlog (doesn't go far into future).  If you are creating a story on the spot, put in a rough estimate as a placeholder and then when you break down into sub-tasks you can remove the estimate from the story.  That being said, I recommend leaving the "original estimate" as the sum of the tasks and the remaining estimate (still at the story level) as 0 so you can get valid metrics and forecasting.

Essentially, without an estimate in your story you have bad metrics.  There is the workaround I mentioned above, though.

Diego Zarpelon · Answer

Hello Petr.

Indeed this is a feature that it's being asked by Atlassian customer, and it's raised as an  improvement request on our https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-9167. So I strongly suggest you to make a vote on it and make any comment that you think it's necessary.

Hope this helps.