Spliting the project

[Eitan Mizrahi]

Hello,

As I have read about AGILE, I saw that it is recommanded that I will create very small tasks (for 1 hour to 3 days).

Also that big tasks are not calling task, but stories, and small parts called epic.

Whether I am using stories->epics->tasks, how can I  connect stories to epics or tasks, and whether all the tasks are solved (or epics) - How is the related story is also closed (since issue is related to a specific story/epic/task, and I cannot relate them to story and task).

How can I see the whole process in graph.

I am a little bit confused of that herierchy, however I need some clarifications about what are stories, epics and tasks, and how can I combine them all together.

Thanks.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The heirarchy is Epic (a huge tale), Story (a manageable tale), Task (a small piece of a story)

A story is the starting point.  They are often written in a way that tells a story about something a user might want, defining who the user is, what they want and why.  They're often written by the users too, rather than developers.

For example

• As a:  Progammer
• I want:  Bitbucket
• So that I can:  Keep my code safe and share it with colleagues

When you start to look at that story, you probably want to break it down into tasks such as "get hardware", "install bitbucket", "add users", "integrate with JIRA" and so-on.  These are the sub-tasks.

You might also have stories that are closely related to it and probably should be tackled at the same time.  So if you've got stories like "Install Bitbucket", "install JIRA", "Install Confluence", you probably want to group them together into an Epic such as "Get the main Atlassian stack for the development team".

In JIRA, it's a bit more complex and flexible.  Issues live in projects.  A Story is only one type of issue, and you can have many types of issue.  It's very common to see Story, Bug, Feature, To-Do item etc all in one project and handled at the same level. 

Epics are also issues in projects, but you have the ability to take a Story (or bug or feature etc) and link it directly to an Epic (which does not have to be in the same project).  That "epic link" groups your stories and issues into that Epic.

Finally, you have sub-tasks.  Again, you can define many types of subtask.  Sub-tasks are created within stories.  They are usually used to break up the work on a story into pieces that can be done individually or by different people at the same time.  (So a team would take on Story ABC-456, and create ABC-458, ABC-502 and ABC-503 so that Alice can be assigned the story and ABC-502, but Bob does ABC-458 and ABC-503)

When it comes to sizing these things, the best thing to do is estimate a story and see if it can be done in a sprint.  If it does not fit, then it should be split up into several stories, or converted into an Epic with more stories breaking it up.  Sub-tasks should not be estimated, they are purely for the team to break up a story into more manageable pieces.

[Eitan Mizrahi]

Thank you for your detailed answer.
As I understood, story are the big parts, which can split to other smaller stories or to tasks.
Epics are like tags/groups that I can link stories to the epic (the stories between themselves might have no relation at all).

I am looking for a way splitting the stories, but I didn't find any button for that. Is there any declaration I shall have in order to see that button/choice?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Not quite, as I said, the story is a story.  It is the starting point, but they're not neccessarily "the big part".  They can be huge, they can be tiny.  "I want to build a house from scratch" and "I want to hang a picture in my new house" are both stories, but they are of vastly different sizes.

Epics are groups of stories that make sense to group together, or represent bigger pieces of work that you're not going to get done in a sprint.  "Build a house" would probably get turned into an epic, with stories like "foundations, walls, internal walls, plumbing, electrics, rood, garden" and so-on.

To split a story, you would either break it down into sub-tasks, or create a new story with similar details (there's a clone function for issues which is used a lot when people split stories up)

[Eitan Mizrahi]

As I have said - I see no button for convert to sub-task (I worked with JIRA at my previous work. I know that this option exists, but I didn't ever declare that from the scram side).

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, you said you can't see a button for "splitting", and you're right, there isn't one.  Because there's several ways to do it, with different descriptions.  Creating sub-tasks is one way to split up a story.  (Cloning and Create/edit are the other two obvious ones)

You should find the "create subtask" under the actions menu (hidden by the "other user" warning box in your screenshot).  If it's not there, then your project does not have any sub-task issue types configured.

[Eitan Mizrahi]

OK. I have logged on as the other user - didn't see the button and neither on my own user loggin, when I choose an issue.

No button related to create subtask etc..

Maybe I don't understand, but how can I configure sb-task issue type?
Give me some guidlines, please.

Thanks.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It's not a button, it's a menu action under the "more" or "..." menu to the top-right of the issue.

To configure the types, go to project administration and find the "issue type scheme".  You need to make sure that there is at least one sub-task type in there.

[Eitan Mizrahi]

Thank you - found that (There is no "more" but there is "...").