How to add task to a story ?

[Kasa s]

What is the way we can add/link a Task to a story.

I was able to add story and task to an EPIC but not able to add task to a story.

[Michael Insberg · Accepted solution]

We also need this feature:

Epic -> Story -> Task -> Sub Task

I'm wondering that it isn't possible with Jira

[Christopher D_Souza]

I am wondering the same thing, is this possible?

[patwarnr]

Wish I could vote this up many timess. We really need Epic -> Story -> Task -> Sub Task with each element having a unique identifier (#). The linking of tasks to a story is cumbersome. 

[Sam Vo]

I'm looking for the same thing!

[Deleted user]

Honestly, I can't believe this entire system doesnt have that... 4 levels would be perfect. One of the problem is, Jira is made for Agile, it doesnt work well in feature-based dev teams - I wonder why they dont get that.

[Timothy · Accepted solution]

The JIRA Agile add on does not support that concept. If you want, use Issue Links to link the issues together.

[Kasa s]

what is the hierarchy (parent-child) we can use in JIRA

[Timothy]

There is no heirarchy in JIRA other than parrent issue and sub task in JIRA. If you want structure, you migth want to consider Strucurte Add on (https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.almworks.jira.structure).

[Pablo Beltran]

"parent" and "child" are only names. You could create such custom link type on JIRA in order to represent a parent-child relationship between Stories and Tasks...

An story is parent of a task and a task is child of an Story.

However, the parent-child relationship is also used by JIRA for sub-tasks:

An issue is parent of a sub-task and a sub-task is child of an issue.

So, to avoid confusion, you could create a new link type: "owns-belongs to" (for instance) to represent the same relationship:

An Story owns tasks and tasks belonging to stories.

O whatever else link type you need.

One advantage of regular links regarding Agile is that they bring a rich expressiveness. For example: Before to start an sprint (Sp1) you could discover that a task (A) depends from other task (B) which does not belong to the same sprint. In this case, you might want to create a link "depends" between the task A ans the task B.

In this simple case, when you are going to plan the task A you need to be able to see that it depends on the task B in order to include the task B in the same sprint or delay the task A until B is resolved. This is a simple and common case where the simply parent-child relationship is not enough.

Many, many companies are using a lot of different issue types (like bugs, test cases, etc) and a lot of link types (the bug X affects to the task Y) to work with Agile beyond Epics, Stories, Task, Subtasks and parent-child which are an small set of elements you can use on Agile, but really there is an endless lot of possibilities to bring Agile benfits to JIRA and JIRA benefits to Agile. And regular links are one of such benefits that you can take advantage from Agile as it is built on top of JIRA.

[cellepo]

This Answer seems to be out-dated:  See my other Answer here.

[Petter Gonçalves · Accepted solution]

Hello Everyone,

Several teams have interacted In this thread for the past few years, so here is an updated answer for everyone interested in this matter:

Today, Jira Cloud standard and free plans allow the following hierarchy to be made:

Epic > Standard issues (Story,task,bug) > Sub-task

On these two plans, this hierarchy can not be customized or changed, however, we have some improvement requests to consider this option in the future:

As a Jira Software user, I want to have support to Initiatives and other levels by default

Sub-issues should be able to contain their own sub-issues

Improve Jira issue type hierarchy

For now, we have the following options to achieve something similar to the requests above:

1 - Upgrading Jira to the Premium plan, you can use advanced roadmaps to properly create new hierarchy levels as described in the documentation below:

Configuring hierarchy levels

2 - You can also use the issue linking functionality. This feature does not work in a hierarchical way but can give you an alternative option to relate one issue to another in Standard and Free plans.

Additionally, Feel free to vote and watch the improvement requests linked above to increase its priority and also receive notifications about any updates.

Thanks!

[Michael Aniskovich]

I continue to be amazed at how many logical and sensible questions I see posted here (because I have had the same myself), only to be told "Well, that's not how JIRA handles fill-in-the-blank."  But I guess Atlassian knows what we want more than we do.

[Victor Grazi]

Is there any way to create a task and add it to an existing story?

[Jasen Moloy]

You can't technically add a Task to a Story.

However, what you can do is convert a Task to a Sub-Task and attach that to a Story (or anything else for that matter). Doing this will now make those tasks appear in the Story's details with a progress bar indicating the progress.

I hope this solves what you're looking to achieve. I'm unsure how this affects the data tracking though.

[Matthew]

We are trying to group cards on our Kanban board based on Epic Links, but subtasks cannot have an Epic Link, which then renders the use of subtasks almost worthless.  It helps tracking subtasks for a given Story, but that still doesn't allow us to group everything based on an Epic.

If subtasks could have an Epic Link, then this probably wouldn't be a big deal.

[Jasen Moloy]

I think the idea is that sub-tasks can't be associated with an Epic because they should only be part of its parent.

An Epic shouldn't care about the details of a story. Only the high-level Story, Task, Bug, or whatever type that can have sub-tasks.

Sadly, by default, JIRA doesn't accumulate the story points mentioned in sub-tasks to its parent. You'll have to maintain the total amount in the parent type manually.

[Földes László]

It does now, I was having an argument with a colleague, that Jira does not have this feature, then he showed me :-) Silent feature upgrade rulez (of course, this is the Cloud version).

[patwarnr]

Would you please elaborate, with steps ideally? Meanwhile, I'll find out if my company's version is in the Cloud on on prem.  My guess is we're not in the Cloud and I still won't have this feature :(

[Andrey Novrotsky]

Actually we need this feature too. We divide Epics for several small Epics, because there is no easy way to link new issue/dev-task to Story during creation.

Doesn anyone find solution, to add such custom field on issue creation page?

P.S. Use link button with selecting dependence to Story, it's not easy way.

[patwarnr]

Agreed. Still need this which I'm seeing as at least a 3 year old request. The linking process is time consuming and requires a whole lot of extra clicks that seem unnecessary. 

[Leland Smith]

I was expecting this to work this way as well and am dissapointed tasks are just free floating entities. Heirarchy is hard to acheive with Jira and there doesn't seem to be a good way to use it to link everything together.

[Pablo Beltran]

You can link a task to an story by using JIRA regular links and track those relationships from JIRA itself or by using an advanced links viewer like Links Hierarchy.

[Földes László]

This is pretty much useless. It gives no visual hint, just a bunch of reference, it is like comparing a command line browser to a graphical browser. In both ways, the expected information and data is there, the only difference is the representation. Which one is better?

[Pablo Beltran]

hehe, so don't use MS Windows nor Linux nor Mac and turn back to MS-DOS!! ;)

[Földes László]

I meant that the GUI is better :) so would be in JIRA (as reviewing Storys with its linked tasks is useless in its current form)

[Pablo Beltran]

I agree Links Hierarchy might show too much data for large Epics, despite that all the data shown by Links Hierarchy are meaningful and helpful. Even more because HIERARCHIES are not supported in Agile as backlogs are PLAIN lists. Just for that Links Hierarchy is much appreciated by Agile teams. I disagree your sentence: "It gives no visual hint, just a bunch of reference" is just like I say: "Links are useless because they are simple arrows between issues". I evaluated (and discarded) supporting such "hints" on Links Hierarchy just due the nature of links. Links are concepts which administrators can configure freely and their meaning would depend on each company's context. Links Hierarchy brings a lot of value for Agile. For instance: you might want to select an Epic as the root or the hierarchy. Then collapse (hide) all the Stories that you are not interested in. Then filter by resolved issues to show only pending tasks. Then filter by Sprint status to hide closed sprints and then inspect visually the resulting hierarchy. Even perform some hierarchy clean up by unchecking undesired link and issue types still present until you get the Agile hierarchy you want to inspect. Of course, it could take you some time and effort as neither red lights nor alarms are fired. but for sure, there will be there a lot of useful information that you could take advantage from, for sure.

[Földes László]

I didn't write about the Links Hierarchy plugin, but about JIRA + Agile missing some basic hiearchy. I don't want to refer to MS Project, but hey, the example is there. (not to mention there IS some kind of hierarchy in Agile, because in Scrum view the Epics are grouped on the left side as a list, and you can change tasks lists based on Epics. But nothing is available for Stories, not to mention Sub-Tasks). Imagine if you had the Agile view as the standard Jira Issue view, Epics, Stories, Tasks, sub-tasks, bugs all in the same list. I don't think you would like it. Of course placing tasks under their respective stories in the backlog would need some auto-ordering mechanism (which is non-existent yet), but believe me, there are people in an organization that don't care about task priority (the only thing a task's place in a list represents now) but task grouping. And Links Hierarchy does not work with the Cloud install :-)

[Földes László]

Just checked the first line of the Links Hierarchy plugin closely, nice :-) "Links Hierarchy resolves the historical lack of visibility of linked issues on JIRA and Agile at an affordable price!"

[cellepo]

I think this has your exact answer, official from Atlassian:  https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile065/jira-agile-user-s-guide/working-with-issues/creating-an-issue/creating-a-sub-task

[Földes László]

In short: no.

This is not an "answer" just a how-to on creating a Sub-Task. This article has no information on what a Sub-Task is, what its role is in a project, etc. And Sub-Tasks are not visible in Scrum board.

Did you read the original question and comments about the "problem" here?

[cellepo]

If you follow the directions there, it achieves the goal of the Answer.

Maybe you should try it instead of throwing a fit.

[cellepo]

Other ways to find the sub-task control are the ellipsis (...) dropdown menu on the Story, or type '.' key command while viewing the story and then start typing "sub".