sub-tasks are not visible on backlog

[jmorten]

Have spent some time trying to figure out this with no success....

Here is the case :

• board filter/query shows sub-tasks
• canban board shows sub-tasks
• sub -task belongs to story
• for all sub-tasks and parent story :
  • assigned to the sprint
  • assigned to a team member
  • having same component
  • having same project

And yes, I have tried the following with no success:

• changing swimlanes grouping
• adding sub-tasks to card layout
• changing board query to filter on only sprint id or one project
• changing query to include only component

Any idea that can help me solve this?

[Tom Lister]

HI @jmorten 

In  Atlassian view of agile, only the top level tasks are useful for ranking and planning, so the sub-tasks aren't shown in the backlog. 

it depends how you view sub-tasks. If you need to include dependencies in your planning then the other tools like roadmaps might help.

When you place a Task or Story on the board, it will show its sub-tasks.

[Константин Михайлов]

"Atlassian view of agile" is a correct description. I have no idia on why other community leaders say that Scrum have no place for sub-tasks.

Scrum DO NOT say how you should work with your task and should you or not dismantle a story into several sub-task.

Limiting scrum board to Story only making it useless for companys with big products where you simply can't do a single Story in a regular 2 weeks sprint or if you have to distribute work among team members.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, Scrum does not have anything to say about sub-tasks.

That's why they are not sprint items - they're a part of a story, not sprint items in their own right.

Scrum works fine for large companies (certainly better than waterfall) with large stories - remember a part of Scrum is backlog refinement which that includes breaking up stories into smaller parts so they can be completed by the team in a sprint.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Sub-tasks have no use in a Scrum backlog (they appear in Kanban because Kanban sees a sub-task as being something that needs doing, just like a standard-level issue.  It does not really do anything with sub-tasks).

• You don't rank sub-tasks outside their parent issue, because they are a part of the issue, not sprint items.  
• You don't estimate on sub-tasks either, their estimate is part of the sprint item of which they are a part.

So, as a backlog's main function is planning, based on sizing and ranking, there's no point seeing sub-tasks in it; they're irrelevant noise.

However, you can get them shown in a basic sense - if you add the "sub tasks" field to the backlog card layout, their keys will be shown as part of their parent issue.