Sidehistorik
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Subtasks are in general fine to use, but if I were to start a new Jira installation, I might tend to start by disabling Subtasks totally - and use Issue linking instead to have the same (and wider) possibilities.
Why?
There are several reasons:
Remove confusion and simplifying
You remove the confusion between the concept and the issue-type.
Tidy up the UI
Subtasks and issue links are represented in 2 different styles / ways in the UI, it does not look well, and as a user You are never sure where to look for related tasks under Subtasks or Issue Links
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I have grown very fond of the Issue Matrix App to display linked issues and issues that can be correlated by fields. Its awesome, flexible - and includes inline edit |
Added flexability
As Subtasks only can live in the same project as the parent, it cant be moved to other projects, this is quite a limitation for many companies that has different Jira projects for different departments/functions when subtasks are used for delegating work.
Some users wont make a subtask, but a linked issue - other users might create a subtasks and then a linked issue in another project.
Double programming of functionality
As Jira has no builtin awareness/functionality that relates to the parent-child or linked issues relation (Links are out of the box primarily a visual enhancement to show a relation), I am often are asked by customers to program such things - this is often:
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Several Apps can perform part or all of the points above from the UI - my primary favorites are JSU Automation Suite and Automation. But I mostly use JIRA Scriptrunner - I does require programming, but extends flexability of the function; the downside is its more time consuming and you have to maintain the groovy code Yourself (between upgrades etc) |
Limitless
As facted, subtasks to subtasks is not a possibility - in JIRA this can be partly overcome by a great App like Structure
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Some other Apps like Issue Links Viewer or Pathfinder can help visualising the linking.
Controlling links
In every Jira installation, issuelinks are somewhat hard to handle, as the links types created over time often has som issue minded relations.
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For some customers we have added the App Extended Schemes for Jira, which give the ability to (amon other functions) to control which links can be used for issue types (Link Scheme).
Changing peoples process
Im sure that removing or disabling subtasks can cause fustration for hardcore and experienced users of Jira, so do always remember to argument and educate for the solutions You implement. Its all a matter of the way people work and are educated to use Jira ....
All good?
Of couse not. Not using sub-tasks has some drawbacks, one of them being worklog and the presentation on the parent, where all work on this and subtasks can be seen and measured..
Real life story
Some years ago - Ive created a sub-task issue type called Sub-change