Can subtasks be moved individually to the backlog (as independent stories)?

[Nicholas DiBiase]

Say we have a case where an individual story is revealed in practice to have much more complexity than originally conceived. Can the subtasks be moved / broken-out independently to the backlog so that the original story may be reformulated as its own sprint goal or epic?  

It seems to me that in such a case, one shouldn't have to manually recreate each subtask as a story.  However, the previous answers [which are old ~2013]  I've seen that deal with similar questions seem to indicate that this breaking-out can't be done [without attaching the subtasks to a new parent].  

Any guidance = much appreciated. Thanks! 

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist] · Accepted solution]

That is still the case. You can't add subtasks to sprints or move them to backlog without moving the parent story.

You will have to either convert the subtasks to stories or split the story and move the subtasks to the new story. The stories should then be moved to the backlog.

[Nicholas DiBiase]

Thanks a bunch for the clarification and guidance, Jobin!  

[michael.ocallaghan]

I am surprised to see you cannot do this in JIRA.

I have a story to do X

- sub task = do first task (complete in sprint 1)

- sub task = do 2nd task (complete in sprint 2)

It seems very old fashioned that I cannot span a user story across multiple sprints without having duplicate stories or large epics lists. Anyone else?

[Kim Alders]

I have a story IN a sprint, and I want to add a subtask to that story that should be in te same sprint. When I add a subtask, this subtask in in the backlog. I cannot move it to the sprint in which the story is located. The message i get is 

Subtasks can't be moved from their parent on the backlog

But I want to move it TO the parent in the sprint. What should I do?

[Kim Alders]

...

[Paolo Fedel]

Oh boy