Subtask/Child Issues

[Carlyle Brown]

Subtask vs Child Issues, are these one of the same or are they separate. If they are how do one enter child issue and not a subtask......

[Andreas]

Hi Carlyle,

it depends on your current Issue. 

• If you have an Epic open, the "Child issue" would be a regular issue e.g. a Task.
• If you open up the newly created Task, you can create once again a "Child issue" in this case, it becomes a "Subtask". 

So the hierarchy look like this:

Epic -> Task -> Subtask

Or in other words

Epic -> Task  is a Parent -> Child relation

While Task -> Subtask  is also a Parent -> Child relation

Best regards

Andreas

[Carlyle Brown]

I am in an EPIC with a STORY open. The screen above is the details of what the story shows. So in this story does subtask and child issues mean the same exact thing or different?

EPIC > STORY > ? (Subtask or Child Issue)

[jazzlyn]

For default config this would mean:

Epic > Story > Subtask

[Andreas]

Yes, as @jazzlyn  already commented, in this case it would be

Epic -> Story -> Subtask

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I know, it's a bit confusing, because there's an overlap in terminology.

The hierarchy in Jira Software is Epic -> Issue -> Sub-task.

All three of these layers are Jira issues in the sense of "a line in a database", but they behave differently in places.

• An Issue does the basics - it is an item that represents something that needs some attention
• An Epic is an independent item that acts as a way to group together issues into larger, cross-project items
• A sub-task is a piece of its parent issue, not a separate item
• Then, above Epics, we also get themes and initiatives from Advanced roadmaps, and other apps can add layers above Epic as well.

And that mention of "parent" in sub-tasks is where the confusion starts.  We often refer to the Issue -> sub-task relationship as "parent / child". and the same for Epic -> Issue.  It makes perfect sense, it's a similar relationship - the issue is a child of the Epic and the sub-task is a child of the issue.

So. when you say 

EPIC > STORY > ? (Subtask or Child Issue)

In human terms, you would use either of those terms, but Jira only has sub-tasks below stories, so you'd be talking about the same thing - the sub-tasks.

And, of course, Epics can have child issues, both Stories and sub-tasks.

Jira uses the word "child" to describe stories in Epics, and to describe sub-tasks in issues/stories

(Generally, the advice is to not create sub-tasks in Epics, stick to grouping stories into Epics if possible)

[Keith Jones]

I agree with the last statement - we prefer to keep sub-tasks at the Issue level, and use Epics to strictly group at the story level. To us, a sub-task is just that - a small piece of work generally needed from someone else to support the main work effort of the issue.

[Carlyle Brown]

So why does Atlassian keep this confusing terminology. The user experience is not pleasant. Something so simple has now become difficult

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Because people don't understand that the Epic Link and the Issue/sub-task relationships are very very different things.

[Amir Katz (Outseer)]

Adding my $0.02 here...

1. You can create a subtask under an issue only if the issue type of the subtask is included in the project's Issue Type Scheme (kind of obvious, but still worth mentioning)

2. If you use the Advanced Roadmaps feature (the 'Plans' in the top navbar), you get a different hierarchy which is unrelated to the inherent hierarchy described in this thread. Just FYI.