Inconsistent Epic estimates across Jira and Portfolio

[Justin Blackwelder]

We are seeing inconsistencies in remaining Epic hour estimates across JIRA and JIRA Portfolio.

Example:

Epic-XYZ has remaining estimate equal to 570 hours

• In JIRA, ran a simple JIRA query of Epic link to pull child issues and sum remaining hours
• In JIRA, shown within Epic-XYZ with the use of the of the "Epic Sum Up" plugin

Epic-XYZ has remaining estimate equal to 537 hours

• In JIRA, shown within JIRA Epic-XYZ under "Time Tracking" 

Epic-XYZ has remaining estimate equal to 557 hours

• In JIRA Portfolio, shown in the "Estimate (h)" column

Epic-XYX has remaining estimate equal to 730 hours

• In JIRA, shown within the Epic-XYZ Epic report

We are unsure why there is no consistency between the three locations, especially the "Time Tracking" which we assume should equal the "Epic Sum Up" or Epic report.

Thank you!

[Martin Suntinger]

Hi @Justin Blackwelder, is that in portfolio standard plans, or the new live plans? The answer might be different for both cases. In standard plans, a likely case for a deviation is that the epic estimate is always the sum of its children, but as soon as there are child stories, the epic can't have an estimate itself, whilst in JIRA there can also be a direct remaining estimate on the parent epic, which is then summed up together with the children. Another reason could be changes made after importing the issues into Portfolio and sync of estimates being turned off, or not all child stories being imported explicitly into Portfolio. 

Live plans query the data dynamically from JIRA, so you should not see a disconnect. They also support the direct epic estimate and sum up with children. If this is in live plans and you still see a disconnect, I'd suggest to raise a support ticket (via support.atlassian.com) to investigate the individual case further. Thanks! 

[Justin Blackwelder]

Hi Martin Suntinger [Atlassian],

We are using standard plans.  I believe in the past, the Epic did have its own estimate and now there are child issues.  Is there a way to clear out the Epic estimate so that only the child summed estimates are used?

Thank you Martin.

[Martin Suntinger]

Hi @Justin Blackwelder, the only way I'm aware of would be to open the epic, click "Edit" and make sure the "Time Tracking" fields are displayed in the edit screen, then you should be able to edit the original/remaining estimate that is directly set on this epic. if you have multiple concerned epics, you could do a bulk change out of the Issues > Search for Issues list. 

[Martin Suntinger]

Also, might be worthwhile to start setting up a live plan (you can try that in parallel to your existing plan and leave that one untouched) - in live plans you can directly edit the epic estimate in Portfolio. 

[Justin Blackwelder]

Thank you Martin, I will try editing.

About live plans, it appears that you must use and assign issues to releases for the plans to be useful.  There is no dynamic/calculate function to project issues into releases; is that correct?

If yes, how does portfolio account for agile teams that act as a continuous 'flow' of development work that does not pre-assign releases?  Our agile teams complete their software development, but the business decides when to release; as that is a business function.  As a result, we don't assign releases/fixVersions until a business decision is made.

Thank you Martin.

[Justin Blackwelder]

Also to note, I am familiar with JIRA, but I am new at my current company and not intimate with this JIRA implementation.

1. We created an Epic in a test project with no estimate
2. We created child issues with estimates linked to that Epic
3. There is no rollup of those estimates on the Epic

I believe I remember from my previous company that the Epic inherently aggregated the child hours.  Could there be a configuration problem? 

Thank you Martin.