Create Common Default Subtasks in User Story (JIRA Cloud)

Dave Todaro August 15, 2014

We have common sub-tasks for many of our user stories. For example Write Acceptance Tests, Write Unit Tests and Code, Run Acceptance Tests, Review Code and Merge Pull Request, Product Owner Review, etc.

For bugs it's something like Write Failing Unit Test/Fix Bug/Retest and Review Code and Merge Pull Request.

Today, the ScrumMaster creates these subtasks manually for the stories at the top of the backlog prior to each sprint planning meeting, for those that are likely to be included in the next sprint. This takes a lot of time and we'd like to automate it.

Here are the solutions we've looked into, none of which appear to handle our needs nicely:

  • Quick Subtasks for JIRA plugin - This looks like EXACTLY what we need; we could have the sub-tasks listed in our wiki for each type of parent issue. Not available for JIRA Cloud.
  • Cloning an issue with its subtasks - The problem here is the product backlog gets created weeks or months prior to issues being added to a sprint, and as time goes on the project team may discover they want a different set of default subtasks so they wouldn't want them all to have subtasks when created.
  • Create on Transition for JIRA - Looks like it might work if there was a way to capture when an issue was added to a sprint. Not available for JIRA Cloud.
  • Clone Plus for JIRA - Looks like it might work, not available for JIRA Cloud
  • CLI Plugin for JIRA - Looks like this may be a solution, but at first glance it looks overly technical and not something that would appear to fit into our ScrumMasters' level of technical ability

Does anyone have any ideas of how we can save our ScrumMasters' time with the repetitive task of creating subtasks?

Thanks!

Dave

4 answers

1 vote
Alexey_Rjeutski__Polontech_
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August 15, 2014

If you don't plan to move out from jira OnDemand to standalone version - the best solution is to create a script that will use CLI or REST API. So your scrum master start the file on his local computer, enter the key of needed field subtasks should be created - and that's all. Actually you can develop/order some GUI for that.

0 votes
ptitdab6 February 9, 2021

Bonjour, voilà comment j'ai fait : 

project setting / project automation / add component / new action / add sub-tasks

steph

0 votes
PJenkins July 2, 2015

The problems of default sub-tasks and estimating the story are apparently unresolvable shortcomings. The only thing we can do is try to work around them as best we can.

0 votes
David Jordan December 22, 2014

Hi Dave,

I have exactly the same problem. Did you find a good solution to this?

Thanks for any pearls of wisdom!

Cheers,

David.

Dave Todaro December 22, 2014

Unfortunately, no. It appears the only way to populate sub-tasks into a story electronicallly is to import both the story and sub-tasks together. This doesn't work for us since we create the stories on the product backlog and only create sub-tasks when the sprint containing the stories is planned.

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