Can you log time spent on subtasks against the parent issue's estimate?

[Dave Hollinden]

Hello, 

A team has requested a task management project in which tracking hours per client is important. They would like to have one issue for each client. Each client can request up to eight hours of services, and these services fall into five categories, so they'd like to have five corresponding sub-tasks.

They'd like to supply an estimate of eight hours on the client's parent issue, and log their hours worked on the subtasks. Ideally, then, the work logged on the subtasks would be subtracted from the estimate on the parent issue. Is this possible?

I can't find a way to do it. The work logged on the subtasks can only be subtracted from any estimates on the subtasks themselves, not from the parent issue. 

The closest approach I've found is to not supply any estimate to the parent issue, and then supply a total estimate of eight hours across all the subtasks. That way the total estimate that flows up to the parent is eight hours, and all the work on the subtasks flows up to the parent against those estimates. This is sort of ok, but unwieldy if the subtask estimates need to be changed as time goes on. 

Is there any way to achieve this? Any help would be appreciated. 

Thanks, 

Dave

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dave Hollinden,

If you plan to set things up like this, best practice is to include estimates only on the parent issue and not on the sub-task issues.

In the Time Tracking section of your parent issue's detail view, check the tick next to Include sub-tasks as shown below:

hours logged on subtasks will be shown here then.

You can also use the Sum of Time Spent column in Jira's issue navigator to display this information in overviews:

Also, have a look at this related question for a bit more background.

[Dave Hollinden]

Hi @Walter Buggenhout, 

Thank you for your response. It's helpful to know that the approach you describe is considered to be best practice. I considered that approach (I tried all combinations of including or not including estimates on the parent issue and the sub-tasks), but thought the Time Tracking display was confusing. 

In our case, hours will only be logged on the subtasks, not on the parent issue. This results in the Estimated and Remaining bars in the Time Tracking display being lengthened with gray bars that represent the hours logged on the sub tasks, but more importantly, the Remaining value that's displayed remains at its original value, suggesting that no hours have been logged against it. The only way to get the real value for hours remaining is to subtract the Logged value from the Estimated value in your head. 

In the screen shot below, the estimate on the parent issue is 8 hours, and there are two sub-tasks that have a total of 7.5 hours logged on them. 

We may need to go with this approach, but it'd be much more desirable to see the Remaining value and it's bar in the chart decrease as hours are logged on the sub-tasks. Possible?

Many thanks, 

Dave

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Dave Hollinden,

I totally understand what you are saying there. About the best practices part, have a look at this community article on issue hierarchy and maybe consider if you really need the sub-tasks.

For a very similar use case, we use Epics with Tasks below them. To set and visualise the budget, we are using Epic Sum Up, which unlocks tracking capabilities like this:

But as mentioned in the referenced article, there's a lot more Marketplace apps that may help you close the gap.

[Dave Hollinden]

Thanks @Walter Buggenhout. I appreciate your help. I'll check out the materials your recommended. 

Thanks, 

Dave

[Goblenus]

@Dave Hollinden Hello!

Have you found a solution for this case?

[Dave Hollinden]

@Goblenus No, I haven't. We went with the approach I described on Mar 27, 2018, and have learned to live with it. 

[Colin Scott]

This is unfortunate, as the new issue view that is being forced on us in cloud has removed this sub-task roll-up of estimated/logged time on the parent. @Dave Hollinden are you having problems with the new issue view?

[Dave Hollinden]

@Colin Scott  I'm on server, so no problems here. 

[Jerry Dodge]

I have no such checkbox on Jira Cloud. There's only one single progress bar labeled "Time Tracking". I'm trying to not have to log time in BOTH the main task and sub tasks. 

[John_Chesshir]

I think Dave describes a legitimate bug here.  This perfectly describes the problem with Sub-Tasks that I am seeing.