Adding and showing story points for tasks

[Nick Coster]

My team are not building software for external customers. We want to use Jira for internal task and progress tracking. 

This means that many of our activities are not User Stories. They are Tasks. 

However I would like the team to get in to the habit of estimating the effort required to perform the tasks. 

Unfortunately I cannot see a way of displaying and using story points in Tasks, in the same way that they are used in Stories. 

I am using Jira Cloud.

Thanks

[Nick Coster · Accepted solution]

Thanks for pointing me in the general direction. However, your answer was a bit like RTFM.

The answer that I needed (now that I have worked it out) is:

1. Select the Jira icon > Jira settings > Issues.
2. Under FIELDS, select Custom Fields.
3. Find the Story Points Field and note the Issue type(s) that are associated with it.
4. To allow Tasks (or Bugs) to use Story Points open the three dot menu and select "Configure".
5. Under the heading "Default Configuration Scheme for Story Points" select "Edit Configuration".
6. Finally, find the heading "Choose applicable issue types" and select the Issue "Task" issue type is selected (along with Stories and Epics).

I have found lots of very very hard to follow posts like yours that have really wasted a lot of my time. Yours was the best but still hard work to follow.

As a Community Champion I would suggest that start by assuming that I have already searched google, and the community boards for an answer, and instead offer specific and useful help.

Regards,

Nick Coster

[Alexey Matveev _cPrime_]

Number 5 in your answer relates for you configuration of Jira. It may not work for other users.

Anyway thank you for your answer.

[Vinod Sharma]

Thank you. Worked for me. 

[Thiwanka]

Thank you. It's work for me.

[Allan Daly]

Super helpful. Thank you for taking the time to explain this so clearly. You rock.

[dbergstein]

@Nick Coster Thanks for explaining so clearly!! I didn't understand the Jira documentation.

[Timothy_Stirling]

Thanks, very helpful but I did have to dig around a little more to get this to work.

I think we wouldn't necessarily need Story Points for Tasks if tasks could be specifically made as a child of a User Story

[Nick Coster]

The particular use case for me was unrelated to the user story format, otherwise I totally agree.  This was noted in the original question.

Since I posted the original in 2018 there may have been some changes that have left my answer out of date.

[prakashkarkee]

@Nick Coster  Thank you very much it help me as a beginner. Though there is little change in 2020 jira cloud but process are quite similar.

[Andrea Rivera]

@Nick Coster Thanks, I was really struggling with that one, appreciate the clear steps. 

[lisa]

Thank you for the original answer! Very clear steps I appreciate! 

[Mike Conway]

As Nick mentioned in his answer, Jira has changed a few things since this was initially posted.  For those who are searching for how to do this and might have stumbled across this post like I did, I figured I'd leave an updated answer for the convenience of others since this was the top result on Google when I searched. Here's how I did it in Jira Cloud as of February 2021.

• Go to Jira Settings and then the "Issues" settings.
• Select "Custom fields" under the "Fields" section on the left menu bar.
• Find the "Story Points" field in the list and click on "X context(s)" under the "Screens and contexts" column.
• It will show you the issue types for which the field is currently available.  Click on "Create, edit or delete contexts."
• On the next screen, click the "Edit context" button next to to the scheme you're using.  (I only had one, but you may have more.)
• On the next screen, in the "Choose applicable issue types" box, select all of the issue types you want to have the field.
• Click the "Modify" button at the bottom when you're done.

You'll still have to add the field to the screens you're using and whatnot, but if you've already done that and it's not showing up because it's not applied to the specific issue type, this should fix it.

Thanks to Nick for his original answer that pointed me in the right direction.  Hope this saves someone a few minutes.

[Nick Coster]

Thanks Mike for keeping the response up to date. I have been amazed at how popular my answer has become. It just goes to show that it is valuable to share our learnings with the community as we go. 

[Houmam]

Thanks Mike, it was really helpful.

[Alexey Matveev _cPrime_]

Hello,

You should add the story points field to the screens for the Task issue type.

You can find more info here how to add a custom field to a screen:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/adding-editing-and-deleting-a-custom-field-776636410.html

[Mateusz Janus]

DEAR LORD! THANKS FOR THAT!

[Nick Coster]

Glad it could help!