Story & Sub-Tasks

[Yadagiri Gajjela]

Hi 

How does the time tracking work when we have Sub-Tasks within a Story? For instance, if I put in Original Estimate at child level this does not roll up at parent level. And, if i burn the efforts at child level it gets rolled up @ parent level. 

This does not seem to be behaving consistently. 

Also, how can i only see Parents and not children in a dashboard?

Regards

Giri

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

If you are doing a scrum-like process with sprints, estimates and burn-down, then you do not put estimates on sub-tasks, as they are utterly pointless.

The whole point of scrum is that you are committing to deliver a set of items within a fixed time box.  The estimates live at a story level.

If you choose to break the stories up into sub-tasks, that's fine, and estimating them individually is fine if you really want to measure at that level, but the sub-tasks are utterly irrelevant to your sprint delivery and velocity.  You commit to stories, not their sub-tasks.

So, Scrum boards do not do estimates on sub-tasks because they are not of any use. 

If you're not doing scrum, then Jira does display sub-task estimates as part of the parent (it has since well before any board support was added to Jira)

[Yadagiri Gajjela]

So, you suggest to estimate at Story level and forget estimating at sub-task level. However, burn the hours at story level?

Also, how do i avoid seeing sub-tasks in any dashboard or report?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, as that's how scrum works.

To avoid seeing sub-tasks in dashboards and reports, configure the reports and dashboards to not include them.

[Yadagiri Gajjela]

Thank you for your response. I was thinking is there any configuration to avoid showing up sub-tasks.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Exclude them from the filters you are using in the reports?

[Yadagiri Gajjela]

Thank you