Agile Board: Epic progress bar incl. Sub-Tasks?

[Rene Rath]

Hi there,

I have an agile board, which is configured to use the Original Time Estimation (as opposed of Story Points, Issue Count etc...) and Time Tracking is set to "Remaining Estimate and Time Spent".

The board displays a couple of Epics, each of them with a progress bar. That bar is based on the time estimation, as expected. So far so good.

I just found out that the time estimation within the progress bar only sums up the estimation of Stories (and bugs), which have a link to that Epic. In our organisation, we collect time estimations not on Story-level, but for each Sub-Task. Therefore, Stories don't have individual time estimations, but inherit their time estimation from their Sub-Tasks.

Is there any way, I can configure the agile board, so the progress bar includes the time estimations of sub-tasks?

Cheers - rene

[Andy Nguyen · Accepted solution]

Hi Rene,

Unfortunately, JIRA Agile does not take into account sub-tasks' original estimates in Plan mode. In this mode, everything is based on standard, visible issues' original estimates, which excludes sub-tasks. You will still see remaining estimates accumulated, but it's for tracking purpose in Work mode only (where you can see the sub-tasks). You may refer to this blog for more information.

Cheers.

[Francisco Nolla]

What about just regular tasks? I don't see the progress bar shading even though 2 out of the 10 tasks are done.

[Michael Brinson]

In the Issue linked to in #2 above, on Feb. 13, 2015, Sana Safai posted a link to a blog post he did about a workaround to get this working!  You must have the download version of JIRA (no Cloud/OnDemand) in order for it to work.  Very cool!

Here is his link to the blog post:  https://riada.se/blog/sana/estimate-your-sub-tasks-in-jira-agile/

[Rene Rath]

Thanks, Andy! #2 has my vote now. Thumbs up!

[Andy Nguyen]

Hi Rene,

I comprehend your point of view. In fact, many other users have requested the same feature. You may want to look into the following tickets:

1. This turns out to be an official request that has been marked with an official resolution as Won't Fix:

• Original Estimate values presented on the Board do not account for Subtasks Original Estimates

2. This turns out to be a newer request with a huge number of votes:

• Sum estimates from sub-tasks in user stories

3. This might have something to do with:

• Scrum Board does not show sum of Estimated Hours when Stories have sub-tasks

Regards,

Andy

[Rene Rath]

Hi Andy,

thanks for the answer. The blog article you mention is very informative, but Atlassian's behaviour here is disappointing: I understand what you are trying to achieve by recommending the use of story points instead of sub-tasks' time estimates, but I don't agree.

Car manufacturers probably all discourage drivers from smoking while driving. Just like Atlassian discourages people from using time estimations for planning. But still, car manufacturers install ash trays in their cars. So people CAN smoke, if they really want to. I'd much appreciate a similar behaviour from Atlassian's side.

If you can, please point me to a feature request I can vote for.

cheers - rene