What is the best way to work with estimating and assigning tasks and sub-tasks in JIRA?

Jonathan Crowe

Our current setup which is causing us some headaches as it's not as clean.

• Epics
• Stories
• Sub-Tasks

For this example, let's just talk about Stories and Sub-Tasks.  We assign story points to Stories for planning but then assign hour estimates to sub-tasks.  

Problems:

Assume the scenario is setup as such: one user story with two sub-tasks.  Each sub-task is 4 hours and each assigned to a different developer.  

1. Before we start the sprint, we'll look at what each assignee has allocated to them in in regards to time.  If you assign the story to a developer, the total workload for that developer becomes 12 hours (4 hours for sub task + total sum of the remaining estimate on the parent shich is 8 hours as it takes into account both sub-tasks).  Therefore the remaining estimates are double counting themselves
2. If we leave the stories unassigned, it'll fix our planning and estimate problem, but then nobody has accountability to close out the story.  We have filters on our board that lets users see their own issues
3. Our board has quickly become overloadeded with items and they aren't grouped in a nice fashion.  We tried swimlanes but wasn't a fan.  What are some ideas how keeping the board in a better and more organized fashion versus having sub-tasks spinkled throughout the board.

Jack Brickey

My recommendation is to leave stories unestimated but assign to someone - either the scrum master or one of the sub-task developers. Check, Include Sub-tasks in the Time Tracking area to ensure the story reflects some of the parts and progress.

Generally speaking you should have a 'primary owner' of every story as they need to ensure the pieces come together and then to ensure the story is marked as done. Another approach is to assign the Story to a 'QA' person to verify the story and close it. Of course they too should have a sub-task in the story for this effort.

Bottomline - estimate on the sub-task not the story. You can always pre-estimate on the story until the details (sub-tasks) are fleshed out and then remove estimate on story.