Epic/ Story vs Story/ subtasks logic

[Tatyana]

Hello Everyone, 

it would be great to know how is the logic for Epic/ Story different from Story/ subtasks in terms of functionality delivery, testing,  anything tangible?

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @Tatyana,

The main difference in my opinion is that Epic > Story is at a higher level than Story > Sub-tasks, which means that Epic > Story is meant for defining, planning and tracking the work to do (at a higher level), while Story > Sub-task is for planning/executing the work within a story (at micro level).

Some differences are:

• The stories are higher in hierarchy than sub-tasks. In Jira, issue category is Epics > Story, Task, Bugs > Sub-Tasks
• An epic can have stories from multiple projects, while a story can have only its own sub-tasks (from the same project the story belongs to) 
• Stories are visible in backlog when means you can plan/rank them; sub-tasks are not visible in backlog
• Jira progress reports (sprint burndown, velocity) do not count sub-tasks and their estimates; they only track stories.

Hope this helps.

Danut.