From a Jira-functionality perspective (not from a project-management methodology perspective), there are two issue types: Standard and Sub-Task. Each has an associated functionality set. Sub-tasks, for example, can only be generated as child to another Standard task. While Epics can contain Standard issues as well as Sub-Task issues, Standard issues can only contain sub-tasks (or linked issues; there is a difference). The functionality described by others (using a standard Story and standard Task issue type and linking/manually creating relationships) is not the same functionality as is associated with a Standard issue and a Sub-Task issue, though through a bunch of additional effort, you can get pretty close (but why do additional effort when you can just use a Sub-task). Traditionally, I've always taken an Epic --> Story --> Task --> Sub-Task oriented approach, as this tends to provide enough granularity for my projects' needs. However, the Epics and Stories just tend to be documentation/organization containers, with no real functionality needs (though one can make an argument for Epics) otherwise. Sub-tasks within Jira tend to have workflow actions that can be associated (e.g. The parent issue can't be completed until all Sub-tasks are completed), and generally are treated somewhat uniquely in the UI (e.g. "Subtasks" section within an issue; similar to the "## Issues in this epic" section within an Epic; note that this is different from the "Linked issues" section). All the previously discussed approaches (manually configured and related Standard issues) do is cobble together a functionality that is similar to what is typically delivered as out-of-the-box functionality of Sub-Tasks.

Hi @Carla Morreale

Excellent question!!

So I'm not sure if it made sense in my above comment, but the easiest way to view it is

tasks: one off items that don't fit in a story, like a small change to some text, a very specific one off chagne to a button, stuff that doesn't fit in a user/stakeholder requirement

sub tasks: the dev internal tasks that a dev will commit to as part of a story. Ideally these are only for the devs themselves, but it depends on your organization (agile is flexible like that). The technical benefits in Jira are usually related to the fact that subtasks can bubble up information to stories, such as time, other changes, etc. Without some plugins I don't even know about, other issue types will not do this, and I've never found a way to simulate it, hence this entire ticket

let me know if you need any more info!

At my work we use subtasks for bugs found by the QA team related to the task.

@ Andrew Knight and @Michael Lawson

I think I am experiencing the same confusion as Andrew.  Having used Jira for many years, I have always used the hierarch of: Epic-->Story–>Task.  Tasks are the discreet pieces of work the Dev Team needs to accomplish to meet the Acceptance Criteria of a story. We assign points to stories and, at some companies, we assign hours to Tasks.  So what is the distinction between Tasks and Subtasks?

@Andrew Knight

Beyond just being below another issue type, there are other benefits as well, such as time tracking bubbling up to the parent story. Dev might not care, but your PMs and Scrum masters will love you forever. Additionally, you don't pollute your scrum boards (or kanban if you feel like it) with extra tasks, it's all built in. Yeah you could alter the filter a bit to not display them, but it's just not the same, those tasks will be hard to find if someone goes with my work around and not relates the "sub tasks" correctly. Subtasks are fully contained within the context of a story, and rightfully so. Those tasks should describe what the person working on the story is going to do, which is a win all around. It helps a dev stay focused, while at the same time giving other members of the team a birds eye view, not to mention others devs being able to look in and also get a good idea of what's going on and if they can offer any insights. With just a task this isn't quite as useful, or even feasible.

One way to view a task is an individiaul piece of functionality that doesn't really consitute a story, like "change this icon to this" or "nudge this element up a few pixels", your one off items. A story is a total requirement, such as "As an User, I would like to be able to add other users to the application" <- there's a lot that goes in to that, and that's where your story with subtasks comes in.

I hope that helps, although feel free to ask me any other questions that might be more specific

Subtask means it's a Task below another issue type (Like a story/task).

@Michael Lawson

So for my own understanding what's the difference between a "sub-task" and a normal "task" aside from the name. You say Stories are broken down into smaller chunks called Sub-Tasks, and I said that Stories are broken down into smaller chunks called "Tasks".

I'm relatively new to this, and would love some help in understanding the difference (functionality wise or whatever).

And surely Sub-Task by the very nature of the name has to be under a Task (not a story)?

Can I be added to the beta?

@Andrew Knight

I believe this was touched on already, but your solution doesn't follow any agile scrum principles at all, whereas subtasks fit perfectly. It defeats the purpose. Stories are intended to be broken down in to smaller chunks of work, ie subtasks. Those subtasks are really for the developers (or even QA) to manage work for that story. A story has semantic meaning, as does an epic. While it's true you could just change the issue type name if you really wanted, perhaps making a custom one, it's a bandaid. If you'd like to go with a solution like that, here is what I recommend and have implemented successfully without actual subtasks;

• create an issue type called subtask
• the workflow for subtasks is simple, just start, in progress, dev complete, as these are only useful for internal development and not QA who tests and verifies the story along with product owners. It really has no bearing on story completion
• These subtasks are technically just regular tasks within Jira, however you apply a little governance to these tasks and set them as "blocks" relations to the story. This isn't perfect, but it's a good simulation of the idea. There's extra management there on behalf of leads, scrum masters, and project managers, but it helps with organization.

I recommend others try the same

@Atlassian themselves: I'm going to +1 previous asked questions regards updates on the actual implementation and not this testing measure. It's been delayed quite a while now and I think your devs need a break

Hi @jfemia,

I've sent you an email requesting to be added to the early users list of the Subtask feature.

Could you reply me once this feature has been added plz?

We really need it.

Nacho

@jason.s I'm trying to figure out the same thing. Following what @andrew.knight said, there is no Epic issue type available to add to the next-gen Projects, only Bug Task and Story. The other issue types are exclusive to legacy schemes & workflows. Subtasks have been a staple of Jira for years and now all of a sudden they're gone.

I REALLY hate this new system and wish they didn't use their production cloud users as alpha testers.

@pcarver – we've been using sub-tasks successfully since beta opened. functionality is on par with previous sub-tasks in classic. We would love to see the ability to have them stay under their parent tasks and not necessarily take up a swim lane for them but functionally have had no issues.

@andrew.knight – I'm not exactly following you. Stories + Tasks were possible in classic scrum as well. In either instance there is no added hierarchy as both 'issue types' are seen on the same level? If anyone is following traditional scrum approach each has different semantic meaning: Stories are our client deliverable impacting issues, Tasks are internal behind the scenes issues.

If it helps, we found that the Sub-Task issue type was only needed because of the way we were used to using Jira.

In classic projects, we used Tasks and Sub-Tasks, but in Next-Gen we're using Stories and Tasks. It's much the same as far as we can tell.

Stories are the minor goals we're looking at achieving, and the tasks are what makes them up. If you need Sub-Tasks, your stories should be epics, or you have a system to big and complicated to be using the light weight Next-Gen projects.

I don't think Atlassian explained this particularly well.

Hi @jfemia, We would also love to use the sub-task feature. I have sent you some emails with this request too the past weeks, but haven't heard back. Also it has been a while ago since your last - very positive - update in this channel. No problem, I can imagine implementing this feature causes some issues form time to time. But maybe you can provide an update about the sub task progress so it is clear what to expect? Thank you!

How is the roll-out going? From the comments it appears that it began on April 30th, so tomorrow will mark two weeks. Are the results positive? I did NOT request to be added to the early evaluation, but will be eager to see it officially deployed if the beta testers don't find problems with it.

@jfemia
If still possible, we'd also love to participate in the early access for the subtask feature
Cheers

@jfemia We would also like sub-tasks early access if possible. Thanks!

@jfemia We are also interested in testing subtask feature. Thanks!

I would like sub-tasks enabled for my next-gen project! Thank you.

@jfemia we would like to get early access to subtasks as well, hfnswedenab.atlassian.net. Thank you

Please could we have subtasks enabled as well, limejump.atlassian.net. Thanks

@jfemia, a great improvement in the value offered by this feature is the ability to have the subtask estimate be added to the parent ticket's estimate (mentioned by someone in my company when I announced the enablement of the experimental feature as a reason for them to opt-out of using this feature).

Also, in the introductory email it would probably be useful to mention that the button is added to the shortcuts under the ticket name and that it is called "Add a child issue" - took me a good 5 minutes to find it (via comparison with a project that did not have this enabled).

@jfemia I'm also interested in testing subtask feature. Thanks!

@jfemia we'd like an early access as well - thanks!

can we participate in early access for the subtask feature?

Hey @Gerard,

Would love to participate in early access subtasks evaluation.

Thanks!

Pavel

Hi @jfemia,

Sent you an email requesting to be added to the early users list of the Subtask feature.

Thanks in advance,

Ger

If you are still taking candidates to the early users list for the subtasks feature we would also like to be added.

Thank you

Hi, we're using also for couple of project already next-gen and struggle with the missing sub-task feature. Would be great to be one of the early users to test it.

Hi, we're also using next gen project and hit this problem - can I request addition to the early users list for sub tasks @jfemia ? Thanks, would greatly appreciate it!

If you are still taking candidates, we would also like to be added to the early users list for subtasks. Thanks @jfemia

Hey @jfemia, just sent you an email to be added to the early users list, thanks for the constant updates !

Hey @jfemia, can we have subtasks enabled in our instance please??

Thank  you

Hi @eryan

I wonder how challenging Jira's refactoring should be, but your work is being very good.

In a pessimistic view, can you give a prediction of when this feature will be available?
We are looking forward to starting a new next-generation project and the lack of this feature is the only reason we have not started yet.

We have tasks enabled now too. Thanks for the tip Erika on 'Group by: Subtask' on the Board, but being part way through a project with some things set up as tasks 'related to' the parent story and some set up as proper child sub-tasks is proving a nightmare - and the ability to convert task types isn't available yet.

I like the new child sub-tasks - much better grouping under the story, but the story points estimate isn't shown on the Backlog, or rolled up to Story level, you can't filter sub-tasks by Assignee on the Board - which is how we run our daily scrums, and they don't show up properly in reports based on Sprint. And I can't get a Workload gadget working on my dashboard (breaking down by Story Points and Assignee).

Wish I'd never started this project using Next Gen now  

Hey @jfemia, could subtasks be enabled for our instance please?

Very much looking forward to trying it out.

Thanks!

Thank you Erika!

Subtasks are showing up on our Next Gen board.  You need to select Group by:  Subtask

How about the ability to see these subtasks on the board?

Our board has gone after enablind subtasks.

adam.dowsett / d.cherepanov Thanks a lot for the feedback. 

Adam, another way to achieve what you're asking is to use the "group by subtasks" feature. Once you're in this mode, if you select the assignee in the filter bar and start using the inline issue create to create subtasks, you will see that the subtasks will be automatically assigned to the person you've selected in the filter.

Dzmitry, this is definitely on our radar but I can't give you any time estimation unfortunately.

chris154 I'm sorry about the wait, we're going through the list of people requesting the feature as fast as possible. You should have it enabled now, enjoy the new experience!

Hey Julien,

What's happening?

I've sent you a couple of emails and replied to Eoin's email a few weeks back and still haven't heard anything from you.

Just a tad disappointed about that.

@julien - just sent you a mail. Looking forward to seeing that toggle on our instance

It would be nice to have an option "convert to subtask".

This works well so far, suggestion for improvement that would be convenient for me, not sure if it is generally wanted though:
When creating a new subtask, it should inherit the assignee from its parent issue.

My team will use subtasks primarily for breaking one of our own tasks into smaller tasks for ourselves.  Since we rarely-never assign a subtask to another person, this would save us time.

Edit: a workaround for those in the same situation, use the Bulk Edit feature (under the menu next to the Child Issues heading) to assign them all to the same team member quickly.

Hi,

we started rolling out the subtasks feature yesterday to the customers that reached out to Eoin or myself. For those of you included in that first rollout, you should have received an email from me. Let me know if it isn't the case.

We will monitor those first customers closely during the next couple of days, and will rollout to a bigger cohort early next week.

As previously said, don't hesitate to reach out to me by email if you want to be included in the early release cohorts. Just send an email to jfemia[at]atlassian.com with your hostname (e.g. xx.atlassian.net) in the body and with "Next-gen Subtasks" as the subject.

Thanks!

Eagerly awaiting such notification Julien...

 patricia.cruz : in my case, this button appeared in issue view:

https://imgur.com/a/Y7roWsy

I have already created the issue type subtask, but how can I create a a subtask under a task? I can not see any option for that. It will not be possible to create subtasks under epics correct? 

Great news!

Hi everyone,

we have rolled out subtasks to our internal instances yesterday and it looks like the performance regression is gone. We will keep monitoring this closely today but we will likely start rolling out the feature early next week. For those of you that sent your instance name to Eoin or myself, I will let you know as soon as the feature has been turned on your instance.

Once again, thanks a lot for your patience.

Cheers!

Any new news on this?

@Eoin,

Thanks for the update.

I actually know a lot about unravelling 17 years of legacy code. It's taken us six years so far – but we only have a couple of people working on it.

This is really something worth waiting for.

To everyone else: I really don't get what the problem is.

Jira classic still works. Just the same as it always did, if not better. 

In any case, I don't think Atlassian is going to lose much sleep about a few disgruntled users.

Maybe it's worth to deploy subtasks as they are now (with all the legacy problems etc) to the test user base that subscribed? There must be something in the subtask functionality that's working after half a year of development. We'll report the bugs and you'll be able to improve the product in an Agile approach.

@Tony Brackins, I appreciate the clarification.

@Michael Lawson, 

Right, but I don't think not delivering is helping either. And by "you", I mean the entire Atlassian team, not Eoin specifically. "Bad form" is an understatement when you're inconveniencing your customers.

@Tony Brackins

With all due respect, I don't think that's helpful. It's bad form on Atlassians part, but that isn't Eoin's fault.

@Eoin,

Even I'm starting to get frustrated at this point. I would think Atlassian has top class architects to over see these items. In my opinion, and maybe you can take this to someone, this reorganization should have been fully tested before next gen rolled out, especially with one of the most important features we use, sub tasks.

I've got to admit. I didn't think the roll-out was coming anyways. You've misinformed before, I'm sure it will happen again.

Thanks for the update Eoin, it helps to be kept up to date, even if it's not what we want to hear.

I think I'm done with Jira. We were waiting with an active subscription for subtask on next-gen projects, but I'm loosing my faith on Atlassian engineering, so I'm going to cancel it right now.

If we don't find any solution that fits us until the subtasks are implemented on Jira Next-Gen projects, maybe we can jump in again.

@ Eoin Ryan

Im not sure about the larger community but I for one have completely lost confidence in Nex-Gen and this is due to these UNEXPECTED constant delays. The impression created is both distasteful and an embarrassment to Atlassian at large. 

All, unfortunately we have hit an issue which has led us to delay the roll-out. We're currently investigating, but we expect this to take some time to fully diagnose and resolve.
I apologise for the frustration this is causing. As some of you know, we’ve been working on decomposing the Jira application into microservices as we build out next-gen. With the decomposition, we are also rearchitecting how our boards work to provide us with better performance at scale and to set the product up for the new capabilities that we'll be delivering in the coming months. The complexity of untangling 17 years of legacy code has been more challenging than expected, but ultimately the rewards we will get will allow us to move much faster in the future.
We will know more about a remediation to this issue in a weeks time, and we will update this ticket with more info then.

Nice! Email sent

Great news. Mail has been sent

Mail has been sent, looking forward to sub-tasks

Email sent, looking forward.

I'm getting quite excited about this Eoin.

Can you add me please? 

milkh7.atlassian.net

We've identified the degradation is mostly noticeable with large amounts of data - a volume of data which exceeds the vast majority of our instances. We've got some optimisations in the pipeline to mitigate this, and we'll begin rolling out on Monday to those of you that have provided your hostnames. If you find any issues, you can reach out to me and we can switch it back off again for your instance. Thanks

Please inform, when it would be possible to create sub task under task or story?

Thank you

Update for today is that the fix has not resolved the performance degradation as hoped. The degradation is happening across classic and next-gen projects which is why we don't want to roll out even for small / new next-gen projects. We're continuing our investigations and I'll update you again tomorrow.

Thanks for the update, email sent 

Quick update is that our release pipeline has been blocked today due to other unrelated issues and we have been unable to validate the performance fix. I'll provide an update again tomorrow.

Thank you so much for the update. I have sent an email. Looking forward to it.

Awesome news,
Email sent. looking forward to it. 

Perfect Eoin!

You've got mail 2x for two hostnames.

That's good news! Thanks for your hard work!

Thanks so much for the update!

Thank you so much, already sent the email.

Thanks so much Eoin! That's great news!! Please give my regards to the developers and their hard work. I'm imagining lots of long nights and weekends, and I know what kin of sacrifices have to be made because of that

And one for me please, BTW Hallo Mads  

Hi Eoin,

This is fantastic news. Thanks for the update.

You've got mail  

Thanks all for you patience. I understand it has been frustrating and I can assure you there are multiple people working on getting this first iteration of subtasks ready. The large scale nature of the architecture changes has been challenging (although will ultimately be rewarding in the long term) and has reduced our ability to provide you with accurate timing on when subtasks will be available. There has been no intention to mislead and every update has been with the full information that we have at hand. The team here are as excited as you to having this first iteration ready for use and will be looking to make improvements as we receive your feedback.
For those of you that would like to be part of the first cohort of instances that we enable subtasks on; can you send an email to eryan@atlassian.com with your hostname (e.g. xx.atlassian.net) in the body and with "Next-gen Subtasks" as the subject? I will subsequently reply to your email at the point we turn on the feature flag for your instance (and I'll also post a general update here on this ticket for transparency)
As of now, we have just merged changes to resolve the last known outstanding blockers - one is a performance fix and we will need to verify the impact of this fix tomorrow in staging. All going well with this fix, we will begin the roll-out once the change gets pushed to production.

I do find it ironic that Next gen was released as a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) yet this essential feature is being held back.  It sounds like this is is also MVP due to the latency, but you released Next Gen like that, so why can't we have this now?

Hi Michael,

I'm using Firefox 66.0.2 (64bits) under Windows 10 and have no issues with the comment button.

As for the sub-tasks issue, I was quite surprised to not have it from the beginning as it seems for me an essential element for any project management. So, my 5 cents to the request to implement it asap and to have some feedback from the development team, as the absence of communication may be distructive by itself.

Even I'm gonna have to ask for an update, Eoin. I'm sure you guys are extremely busy and getting inundated with requests like this doesn't help, but eventually stuff has to give, ya know? :/

Also, FWIW, is anyone else having trouble clicking the comment button in firefox? I can only actually see it in Chrome.

I am sure that everyone on this thread would appreciate a word from the Jira team on the timeline and why the commitment keeps getting missed. Can someone please give an update?

@Tom, if I were you, I'd ask your Jira admin to move your Next Gen projects into a Jira classic project and manage separate boards for your clients.
As I'm sure you appreciate, Jira is an industry standard tool so I'd advise you to "roll with the punches".
If you really want to shift to an alternative tool, the only one I'd recommend is Visual Studio Team Services (now known as Azure DevOps)[ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/devops/boards

...but please be aware of the steep learning curve and licence costs.

Do you know any good Jira alternatives? Something with roadmap, easy to use backlog/sprint board, basic metrics AND SUBTASKS?  I have multiple clients using Jira next gen due to simple to use interface, but the lack of subtasks (and updates on clarity when can we expect them) has finally killed their patience.

Same here - was loving the next-gen UI, but no sub-tasks and epic link not working in JQL are massive drawbacks. I don't think I'll be using it for another next project until these issues are addressed. 

We're in the same position, I would rather have 300ms response time than not having sub-tasks. We're not in the position of having to migrate back to classic, which means we'll probably never go back to Next-Gen - it's too much work to be migrating back and forth when we have projects to run.

+1 on Gary's idea, I love the idea of a switch. Granted, I do understand that that may not be trivial given the current point in development time.

At this point I'm trying to be as patient as I can, as I know how these things go sometimes. However, the lack of subtasks is now starting to affect the metrics that go to the project management and my higher ups, and without that kind of relationship the metrics are skewed and have to be tweaked manually. The way Jira handles subtasks is one of my favorite aspects of the application, and I have no intention of going anywhere else. All I can do is implore you all to provide more status updates on where things stand. I see a lot of attrition ahead without this feature. Thanks all!!

This is starting to become an issue for our company as well.  I am glad it is being worked on, also glad we got an update on the 22nd March (which is only a little over 7 days ago).  Patiently waiting for another update some time this week (which would qualify as "next week" from the original post - at least in my book).

As far as the board load time - make it a switch.  If you want sub-tasks, and use them, put up with the additional board load time.  You can optimise it later and give us all a surprise present in a future release.

Other than that, really liking the next gen board.

Eoin - Understand you don’t want to compromise on performance, but you’ve got a number of folks who are going to leave Next Gen (or JIRA) who are telling you they’d prefer a slower implementation with tasks than no tasks at all.  It’s worth considering.

If you’re not the person who decides how many resources to apply to this problem, I recommend sharing the feedback with whomever can make this a higher priority problem to fix.

I am not considering switching to classic projects, I want to find an alternative to Jira altogether. This whole experience has left a really bad taste in my mouth. Subtasks and queryable Epic links would keep me here, or at the very least consistent communication with us and actual timelines, but it looks like there is a single developer working part time on Next Gens, so I don't see any significant progress being made. Out of the dozens of future enhancements listed here there are only TWO that are In Progress. Seems like Atlassian has abandoned next gens?

I am just beyond words.

Echoing previous comments, my engineering team is at the breaking point not having sub-tasks. If something is not released this week we'll be forced to switching back to Classic. Not too thrilled about that.

Releasing the feature with 300ms lag time to test functionality and incrementally improving that time makes sense to me!

Hi Eoin,

Please be consistent with your updates; even if it's 10s to write - "still heads down working."

You said clearly on 3.22 "Apologies for the delay (although we don't expect this to be a big delay) and I'll update again next week when I have more info."

That next week came and went.

Eagerly awaiting sub-tasks...

Hi Eoin,

Thanks for the last answer.
A week more has passed since your last update.

Could you give brief update on where you are in regard to this feature?

Please note that the "Sub-tasks are coming soon!" fancy notice was added on Nov 28th, almost 4 months now. And the ticket was moved to "In progress" on Jan 23rd, more than two months now......

Furthermore, this ticket JSWCLOUD-17155 is the subtask #41 out of 123 subtasks of JSWCLOUD-17392, which is a ticket of type "Suggestion". Is this the way to use your tool?

^^ Agreed.