Prioritizing subtasks independent of their parent

Mark Kurt October 2, 2012

I posted a question to an old thread, but afraid that it may not be seen (https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/86285/how-can-i-plan-individual-technical-sub-tasks-in-sprint-planning?page=1#92393)

I am reposting here to see if a broader audience can help:

We have actually adopted the convention of not allowing a parent task to span sprints because the subtasks get pulled into the parent task's sprint. This leads to things like Feature A - Phase I, Feature A - Phase II which isn't great, but is workable. However, a bigger problem not solved by this is the fact that you can't prioritize child tasks independent of the parent (at least we have not found a way to do this). This prevents the ability put critical subtasks at the top of the priority queue. Any thoughts or ideas on how to accomplish this?

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sclowes
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October 2, 2012

It sounds like you're trying to have stories that aren't independent (i.e. you cannot deliver these stories individually). If that's the case you'll be best served with the Epic support we're currently working on. You'll be able to have 'Feature A' then the real stories that make it up linked to the Epic (rather than just 'Phase I'). We hope to have something ready for use in labs soon.

The sub tasks cannot be ranked independent of their parent, they can only be ranked against each other.

Thanks,
Shaun

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Mark Kurt October 2, 2012

Thanks Shaun for the answer. Yes, the use of stories in that way was an artifact of other deficiencies in Epics - so we have mostly ignored them until now - glad to hear those are being worked on.

If Epic support allows for the rankings of stories independent of the Epic then I think we can just move everything up a level and have the features we need.

sclowes
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October 2, 2012

Yes, the stories for an Epic will be rankable independently of the story itself. You can check out a mock up of what we're think of for Epics below (there is no guarantee that the final result willl look anything like this but we're open to feedback).

Thanks,
Shaun

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