Relationship between Subtasks and Stories

If a story contains subtasks, you can’t update any information on the parent story itself (such as points/hours or percent complete). Furthermore, you can’t move the story across the story board to update its status. Rather, any changes you make to the story’s subtasks are reflected on the story. The combined story points or hours for all subtasks determines the points or hours of the parent story.

For example, if a story has only one subtask valued at 4 points, the story itself also has 4 points. If you change the subtask point value to 3, the point value of the parent story is changed to 3. If you create another subtask on the same story and set the point value for that subtask to 4, the point value for the story is changed to 7 in order to reflect the combined point value for both subtasks.

This same logic applies to second-level subtasks (subtasks of subtasks). If a subtask has one or more second-level subtasks, the subtask is calculated based on the second-level subtasks.

Relationship between the Story Board and the Backlog

The iteration backlog shows only stories or subtasks where you can set an estimate. If a parent story has subtasks that are displayed on the story board (because they are assigned to the same agile team and belong to the iteration), the parent task is not displayed on the backlog. In this situation, only the subtasks are displayed on the backlog, while the subtasks and the parent story are displayed on the story board.

For example, suppose that Story A contains Subtask 1 and Subtask 2 (and both subtasks are assigned to the same agile team). In this situation, Story A is displayed on the story board in a swim lane with Subtask 1 and Subtask 2. However, only Subtask 1 and Subtask 2 are displayed in the backlog.

This same logic applies to second-level subtasks (subtasks of subtasks). If a subtask has one or more second-level subtasks assigned to the same agile team and belong to the iteration, only the second-level subtask is displayed in the backlog.

For more information about the backlog, see Manage the agile backlog.

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