Tasks vs Subtasks

[Douglas Cuffman]

I'm trying to understand the concepts and intended usage regarding tasks vs subtasks.

When I create a new story (NextGen project), I can create a subtask from within the story after it's been created. However, I am not able to create a task.

I would logically expect that a subtask is well, a sub-level of a task and a task is a sub-level of a story.

Next question: if my team tracks their time using a task or a subtask does this get reflected in the story time tracking?

Thank you for your help.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Jira is a bit more flexible than that, it does not demand that you name issue types in any specific way (other than Epic)

The hierarchy Software has is Epic -> Issue -> Sub-task

You can only have one issue type of Epic, but you can have many Issue level types and in company-managed (classic) projects, you can have meany sub-task level types.

A quick glance at the one I'm currently logged into shows:

• Epic
• Issue types:  Issue, Task, Story, Bug, Feature, Question and and and
• Sub-task issue types:  technical task, documentation, deployment and and and

So, to be able to create a task, you just need an admin to make that type available in your project (they may have to add a new issue type for it).  If task is an issue level task, you can create one by clicking the on of the create new issue options.  If it's a sub-task level, then you click "create sub-task" from within an issue view.

For the time-tracking question, yes, your people can log time on either the issue level or the sub-task.  There is a secondary set of fields that roll up a display as well, so that you can do things like:

Remaining estimate:  Remaining estimate on this issue

Sigma Remaining estimate:  Remaining estimate on this issue and all its sub-tasks added together

(However, remember that if you're doing scrum, sub-tasks are not sprint items, so data on them such as time-tracking is not used in scrum estimate calculations)

[Douglas Cuffman]

Thank you very much, this clears it up for me and provides some direction going forward.