How to enter an estimate for an epic in Portfolio Cloud?

[Erick Armes]

The documentation for JIRA Portfolio Cloud seems to indicate that you can input an estimate for an epic, rather than deriving an epic's estimate from its children stories.  However, my (limited) experience with Portfolio suggests this is not possible.  Is there a config somewhere that I need to adjust?

[Martin Suntinger · Accepted solution]

Hi Erick, the logic is as follows in Portfolio: you can enter an estimate for an epic as long as no child stories are defined at all in order to do rough sizing and forecasting based on that. As soon as stories are defined in the backlog (even if they are not estimated), the epic estimate field becomes read-only as the sum of estimates on the child items. A workaround some people apply in case there are stories, but they are not yet estimates, and still you want to do rough sizing of the epic is to temporarily add a placeholder story (with the name of the epic), with the epics rough estimate - and later remove it again when the stories get actually estimated. 

I agree with James' comment above that ideally you have stories and the epic estimate emerges as the aggregate, but it just might not always be the case and you still need a rough forecast, for that you can enter it as long as the child stories are not there. 

[James Strangeway]

Hi Erick,  I would advise against estimating at the Epic level if you plan on estimating the stories.  I have always felt that the Epic estimate should be arrived at organically even if it is possible to put an estimate on the Epic itself.