Difference between bug and sub bug.. when are they used?

RAJA CHAKRABORTY
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October 15, 2020

I need to understand what is the difference between a bug and a sub bug in JIRA? When will I use either of them..Please explain in detail.

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Esther Strom
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October 15, 2020

Hi, @RAJA CHAKRABORTY - welcome to the Community!

So sub-bug isn't a native Jira issue type. I'm assuming it's a custom sub-task issue type set up in your system. I can't tell you what your Jira admin intended with that, but I can explain the use of subtasks in general. If you have a project manager, you might discuss with them how they expect it to be used in your particular case.

In Agile, you have a hierarchy of issue types - the most commonly used ones are Epic, Story, Task, and Bug (or Defect). Stories, Bugs, and Tasks (can, but don't have to) roll up to an Epic. You'd use an Epic to group together a chunk of related work.

The most common use of subtasks is when a story requires multiple pieces of work, sometimes  by multiple developers. You'd have your functional description and acceptance criteria on the story, and then each developer who needs to work on it has their own subtask. This allows them to complete their work independently, log time against a ticket specific to them, etc. while still making sure (depending on workflow) that the story doesn't move into the next status (QA testing, for example) without all of the required pieces being complete. 

I'm assuming a sub-bug would be similar - if a bug or problem requires independent work by more than one person, a sub-bug could be assigned to each person. They would each complete their piece of the work, and the bug could then be resolved when all of the pieces are complete.

Subtasks have some behaviors that might be considered unusual if you're not familiar with Jira's way of doing things. For example:

  • subtasks show up on a sprint board once the sprint is active, but do not show up in the backlog view.
  • A subtask can only live in the same project as its parent - epics can have children (stories/bugs/tasks) that live in other projects, but a subtask cannot be in a different project than its parent story/bug.
  • A subtask inherits the sprint value from its parent ticket (if it's been set).
  • If you use issue security levels in your system, a subtask inherits the parent's issue security.
  • If you use story points estimation, subtasks do not have estimation - the total estimation for all subtasks should be included on the parent story/bug.
Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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October 15, 2020

Bother, I can only up-vote once.

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