How do I create a Bug and have it appear as a Sub-Task under the related Story on the Agile Board?

[Deleted user]

A Bug is created as a 'top level' Issue, this could also be from other sources such as Zephyr or Bugdigger. The Bug then ends up on our Teams's Backlog, it then has to be manually moved into the relevant Sprint. Once in the Sprint it has to be manually linked to the relevant Story. This is a lot of manual work. Once linked it is now a separate item (Story) on the Dashboard with no visible link to the actual Story it relates to. The team find it extremely difficult to manage as there is now no visibility of which Bugs are for which Stories. There could be many such Bugs and many Stories on the Dashboard, it is going to be extremely difficult and confusing to figure out which Bugs belong to which Stories?

In the example below, Bug CELLC-216 was created as a new Issue of Type Bug from within Jira, it was automatically created on the Backlog and manually moved into the Sprint. I then linked it to Story CELLC-200 and it is related to this Story. You can see link in the details of the Bug Issue however the Issue is not visibly linked and hence very difficult to manage when you have many Stories and many Bugs.

The Bug has to appear under the related Story as it is a failed result and does not meet t he Conditions of Acceptance of the related Story, in this case CELLC-200.

How do we do this or what are we doing wrong in our process?

Thank you
Kevin

[Emily Schneider · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin,

I checked and the feature was added to the feature request list. You should be good.

Kind Regards,

Emily <--- works with Chris at Zephyr.

[Elitsa Widenhorn]

Hello, 

Any news when this feature will be ready?

Thanks,

Elitsa

[Christian Britton]

Three years later and still no news... I guess we are suffering from the legacy of the good'ol bug and defect tracking system from the pre-Scrum era.

[Hendrik Stapel]

still no update?

[shakti khurana]

Hello Atlassian Team,

Are you having any plan to address this feature?

we are in 2018 still no updates.

[Randy Maulana]

Hallo,

Some people are waiting for a years. Me either need that feature.

Thank you

[baytulbhuiyan]

Are you guys talking about this?

[Engr Abida]

Yes please explain me how you add this

[Darja Odorovska]

@baytulbhuiyan could you please explain, how to configure board or a project to have Sub-Bug issue type under related story?

[Shantanu Deshpande]

Been waiting on this for years. Is this now a feature?

Is there a configuration that is needed?

[Senthil Selvakannan]

JIRA Settings - Issue Types - Add Issue Type.

In Add Issue type box, select "Sub-Task Issue type"

[Son Do]

This is what I'm looking for. Thanks :D

[Sathapenage Appuhami Ralalage Roshan Madusanka]

Is it available to select sub_bug on the main task/issue?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes - create an issue type of sub_bug and add it to the issue type scheme.

[Abhishek Kaushik]

Any updates on this pls?

I completely agree that Bugs are actually part of User Story so there should be a mechanism to add Bugs under Story. This will also help to get effort roll up at story level which current don't happen as bugs are considered different issue type and Story separate, and there is no kind of parent child relationship

[Abhishek Kaushik]

Why no updates from Atlassian on this thread ?

[Craig Brunetti]

Bugs are of at least two flavors:

1) Bugs created specifically because of the sprint work at hand

2) Bugs found (by whomever) to be existing in code, outside of the current sprint's committments

Bugs found purely as pre-Sprint debt should wind up in the PB as Bugs. Fine, JIRA can do that, though somehow they are not consistently credit-able as Stories (and neither are Tasks).

Bugs found as developers try to release code to testers should never hit a backlog (since they are not separately-releasable), they should be associated to the Story whose work must be corrected. JIRA has never been set up to do that... it's let for everyone to configure on their own, yet everyone in their *right mind* needs it. At best, we're expected to fill up our Sprint backlog with Bug-type issues and manually associate them to the Story for which they must be corrected, which is total hacksauce.

TFS can do this out-of-the-box. Has been able to, for years, at least since 2010, if not 2008. 

So, our real question should be, since Atlassian eats its own dog food, how do THEY organize the paperwork necessary to identify bugs on Story work?

[Mayank Kapoor]

I have managed a work-around for this...

Can create a sub-task of type of any name say "defect" or "issue" ,tried with name "bug" but gave error for name conflict 

you even can assign bug icon to it...

so while creating subtask you can choose that sub-task type for that feature module 

Steps : 

1. Go to Issues (only if you have admin access)

2. choose subtasks in left pane 

3. choose to add subtask issue type 

4. add a custom name and desc. and add an icon similar to bug 

Thats it i guess ... happy Testing !!!!

[Katie Guernsey]

I loved this solution. Thank you. Why is it so hard to find examples of best practices on help or set up or anywhere on here?

Having insight into bugs for a PO is great bc you can decide whether or not a bug is going to make you fail a sprint or whether you can deprioritize without micromanaging your QA engineer.

[Galyna Johnston]

I have added a sub-task to my board, but it does not appear in the list when I am selecting an issue type. 

Suggestions? 

[rob_goddard]

You can no longer use the Create Issue function with this method, you have to create the issue as a Sub Task on the User Story in question. Unless I am misunderstanding you.

[Abhishek Kaushik]

I completely agree that Bugs are actually part of User Story so there should be a mechanism to add Bugs under Story. This will also help to get effort roll up at story level which current don't happen as bugs are considered different issue type and Story separate, and there is no kind of parent child relationship

[Terris Linenbach]

3+ years later, I still can't create a sub-task that has a red icon. You meet my expectations, Atlassian.

[Deleted user]

I'm experiencing the similar issue with X-Ray.

When link a bug to the related user story, this bug us shown at the bottom of the active sprint board among 'Other issues'

It would be nice to have it as a part of the related user story. Could you help please. 

[narender mehra]

Hey All, 

This is quite funny. I was using Jira in my last to last company and was checking this thread in 2015 for answer "how I can have bug under a story on my scrum board". Then I changed my the company and started using another tool.

Now I again switched my job and my company uses Jira and was looking for the same answer. 3 years on and Jira still has the same issue. Not sure how long it will take them to have this feature. May be my grand children will find the answer. ;)

Cheers!!

Narender

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You can do this, you've always been able to do it in Jira.  Look for the "create sub-task" link on the issue, after checking the project has an issue type of "bug" as a sub-task issue type.

The problem here is that you can't create sub-tasks in Zephyr.

[narender mehra]

Hey Nic,

I got your point. It makes sense.

Happy that my grand children don't have to wait for it. 

Appreciate your help. :)

Cheers!!

Narender

[thisnamenotused]

I am new but I don't think this what everyone is wanting. 

Explained:
I want to address a bug while working in a certain user-story because the bug occurs on the same webpage-step that the user-story does.  So I just want to tell everyone that "hey, while I am making changes to this page/user-story I will also attempt to address this bug."

We would think that since we already pulled up the subtask modal and are defining the subtask that the Issue-type dropdown would either not be in this modal at all or at least allow other sub-sub issue types such as "bug."

If this is not the way it is supposed to work then please show where in the Atlassian documentation I should be looking for how to communicate. What is the proper alternative to a sub-task-bug?

Why is this even in the documentation at all if there is only one. Add bug to that list as well and after you create it add a pop up that asks: "Would you like to clone this bug to an external issue for recording purposes or in case you can't fix it within this user-story?"

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

As an admin, go to the "issue type scheme", and add "sub task bug" to the scheme.  You may need to create the new type first.

The documentation is simply showing the defaults.

[thisnamenotused]

Okay, thanks.  Very concise and effect answer @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-.

For the record:
For us new guys it would be nice if there were blue links next to the headers in the picture I posted above that read "click here to edit or add types."

[Craig Brunetti]

@Nic, so, what do you do if your admin refuses to do so? :)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Depends on the admin and your processes.  If they're enforcing a standardised way of working, you'll need to come up with a good reason to change that.  If they're not doing it for other reasons, you'll need to ask why.

[Craig Brunetti]

Oh, that wasn't really the point of my question. :)

Given an admin that would read the accepted answer here, and deny it regardless, especially in a budding environment (which usually lacks standardization), the point here is that Atlassian may have put the right power into the wrong hands. Having Stories get Bugged seems entirely natural, esp. to the people on this thread, so it should have been default behavior, so that an admin would need to justify taking it away.

Further still, it'd be more interesting to learn how Atlassian deals with bugs on Story work. Do you have any insight on this?

[Steven Grossman]

Four years... no fix!

[Deleted user]

@Chris Miller, can you confirm this request is added to a feature request list, if so I can close this issue?

[Deleted user]

thanks Chris!

I would really like the ability when a Bug is created, either in Jira or from a 3rd party method such as Zephyr that the user is able to select whether it is created as a top-level Issue (Story) or the ability to search for the Story and create it under that Story at a sub-level (Sub-task), as both these scenarios are real in our environment. The Story is not Done until it is Done, this means QA is complete and all bugs fixed.

See also this discussion: https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/186477/greenhopper-best-practices?page=1#187965

[Savneet Singh]

I know this is a bit of an old post, but having the same issue.

I totally agree with this.  There are times where a bug may be created and has nothing to do with an existing story (i.e. a user was using the application and found and reported a bug) which should show as a top level issue and there are many times (especially while QA is testing as user story) where the bug should be a sub task of a specific User Story.  

Having the ability to define the behaviour of the bug would be great!

[Christian Britton]

Completely agree.

[Chris Miller]

Hi Kevin,

Zephyr currenlty doesn't support the creation of a subtask "bug" from the testcase execution screen. You'll either need to create a bug and convert it to a subtask as an extra step or create a new subtask and then link it to the testcase execution, per Renjith's advice.

I'll add it to our feature request list.

Kind Regards,

Chris

[Renjith Pillai]

In fact, a good practice to handle Bugs found during the Sprint is to create it as sub-task of the story (create a new sub-task issue type called Bug). I am not sure if Zephyr/Bugdigger supports creating sub-tasks.

If that is not possble, someone has to manually convert that bug into a sub-task.

[Deleted user]

Hi Renjith, thank you for the feedback. We initailly had a Sub-task of type "Bug" but this resulted in other issues with reports and duplicate bugs so our EA team removed it. (I am trying to get them to add it again). The problem is Zephyr and BugDigger only creates the Bug as a top level Issue, so we need to duplicate the work and create another Sub-task and link it to the original Bug, this causes all sorts of other issues.

[jrvilda]

Hello,

We are trying to use a new type of issue called sub-bug of sub-Task type, from Administration, issues. Then we have changed the icon so that it has the same as the Bugs. And we have added this type to our "Issue type schemes". In this way we can add to the user stories, sub-task and sub-bug.

Could it be valid Do you need other functions? Could you indicate the problems encountered? Surely it will happen to us too.

[Stacey Trooster]

Just to add another fresh post in 2020 (not that it will matter): still waiting for this feature... 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The feature as defined has been available in Jira since before the question was asked.  You have almost always been able to create sub-tasks unders stories and used them as bugs.

I don't believe Zephyr has a quick link to creating them though, make sure you check with them

[Deleted user]

Open an US/Issue to create a Bug:

Press the letter C on your keyboard.

A pop will show up. Select Bug in issue type.

In same screen find “issue" field, drop down will display the current US at the top, select it. This will create a link to the US  you are currently looking at.  

Populate any associated content: Release, Epic, add Story Points, select the Current Sprint from the Sprint Drop down.

[thisnamenotused]

Speaking of bugs, @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- , The "view answer" button at the bottom of the email links for the notifications of these responses is broken.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

They're working fine for me.

[Ravi Talasila]

Still no permanent solution where we can group linked bugs under a story?

[Lee Calladine]

We created a sub task type issue type and used that as a bug type with all the associated workflow and screens and it appears in the swimlane on the active sprint boards as expected.

[Deleted user]

@Emily Schneider thank you :-)