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Different workflows for Stories and Subtasks?

Austin Davidson

Is it possible to assign Stories and Subtasks (within the same project) to different workflows? We don't test subtasks, only the actual stories, so we'd like to have an Pending->InProgress->Closed workflow for subtasks but a Pending->InProgress->InTesting->Closed workflow for stories. Is this possible?

Thanks,

Austin

Accepted answers

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Yes. Define the two workflows you need, then go to "workflow schemes" and create a new one. Tell it to use workflow 1 for Subtasks, and workflow 2 by default. (You can only have one workflow per issue type, but you can share them)

JulioV

Nic's pretty much nailed it on the head, ultimately you'd want to configure a workflow scheme to manage the issue type-to-workflow associations. More info here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Configuring+Workflow+Schemes

Austin Davidson

Thank you both for your quick & helpful responses. Much appreciated!

Chris114

How do you align this with a Kanban board? If the Story workflow is different to the subtask work flow?

Kevin Preston

Just to be clear, is it possible to have a different workflow for a sub-task that is part of a story?

Kevin Preston

Hi, I have set up the following workflows:

Created some stories and sub-tasks and move a few along their workflows then when I view the agile board both workflows have been merged into one:

TIO BAU Workflow is ToDo->In Development->Testing->UAT->Done

TIO BAU Sub-tasks workflow is YoDo->InDevelopment->Parked->Done

I am looking to have two boards, one for each workflow and if possible the sub-task workflow to group the sub-tasks by parent story.

Cheers,

Kevin.

All comments

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

JulioV

Austin Davidson

Thank you both for your quick & helpful responses. Much appreciated!

Chris114

How do you align this with a Kanban board? If the Story workflow is different to the subtask work flow?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

You can have separate columns for the status (looks a little odd as you can't drag any issue into any column then) or you can share columns (e.g. mix status in-progress for stories with under-development for subtasks)

Sasank Potturu

How do I overcome a situation where there can be different sub-task classes each with its own userflow.

Let us say there a few design sub-tasks and a few engineering sub-tasks which follow their own workflow processes. How do I handle a situation like this?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Same answer, there's nothing to "overcome", just use two flows.

Sasank Potturu

Just to clarify,

Create Subtask Issue Type 1 and Subtask Issue Type 2 and get different work-flows assigned to them. Is that what you are suggesting?

Kevin Preston

Just to be clear, is it possible to have a different workflow for a sub-task that is part of a story?

Jack Brickey

yes

Kevin Preston

Not quite what I expected. I have created two separate workflows, one for sub-tasks and one for the rest. I create a series of subtasks under a story, the end result is both workflows are merged into one where you can only move the sub-tasks to the columns that were part of its dedicated workflow.

I am looking to have two separate workflows, one for the devs to move the tasks through the development phase (preferably grouped by story or an easy way to see what story the tasks belong to) and one to move the stories through (e.g. testing, PO review, UAT etc).

Can this be done?

Jack Brickey

K, I may not be following and consuming too quickly but...

if you have two WFs and you want one to apply to the Story and the other to apply to the sub-task then you simply need to assign the issue type to the appropriate WF.

Story = WF1

Sub-task = WF2

i must be missing something?

Kevin Preston

Hi, I have set up the following workflows:

Created some stories and sub-tasks and move a few along their workflows then when I view the agile board both workflows have been merged into one:

TIO BAU Workflow is ToDo->In Development->Testing->UAT->Done

TIO BAU Sub-tasks workflow is YoDo->InDevelopment->Parked->Done

I am looking to have two boards, one for each workflow and if possible the sub-task workflow to group the sub-tasks by parent story.

Cheers,

Kevin.

Jack Brickey

now you are confusing me but ignoring the previous and focusing on this new detail...

why would you want two boards, one for stories and one for sub-tasks? If you map the statuses associated w/ the various workflows to the proper columns then dragging and dropping will adhere. The workflows are not merged into one it is just that both issuetype exist on the same board because you have not excluded any issue types in the filter.

If you are dead set on having one board for Stories and one for sub-tasks you can do that (see below) but I don't think you will like the results. Stories and their sub-tasks belong together.

Separate Boards:

Board 1 board filter: project = TB and issuetype != "TIO BAU Sub-tasks"
Board 2 board filter: project = TB and issuetype = "TIO BAU Sub-tasks"

p.s. have you looked at using Swimlanes by Stories? Maybe that would work for your goals.

In any event this topic is drifting from the original thread and I fear will confuse future users. To that end, if there are further questions, it might be best to open a new thread.

Tarang

Separate boards aside, I encounter a problem when using the single board so as to have a single source of truth/view of work flow across a team when using "stories" & their WBS in the form of "subtask".

I have coherently mapped the possible states of "Story" & "Sub-task" into desired columns when configuring the Board. However as soon as I instantiate a Story with a Subtask, the board re-flows that story out of its current context & priority order for execution/flow and sets it apart into its own swim lane for that story. This is wrong on multiple levels for any execution team

- for one breaks the order of stories/tasks/bugs that they will likely have agreed at planning and thus the visual representation on the board

- The swim lane sets the "Story" in the "ToDo" column when right next to it it echos back the "In Development" state.

- What is the value of mapping the states for the jira types story, task, sub-task if they aren't respected by correctly landing the item in the corresponding column when using them as a combination (story & sub-task)?