Preserving Original Estimate

[Tanner Wortham]

I love how the children estimates roll up into the parent, but I see one problem with this. Let me describe:

1. The parent item is created. No original estimate is specified.
2. Two children tasks are created with estimates of 3h and 5h. The parent's estimate is now 3 + 5 = 8h.
3. The parent is now officially considered "planned." the team expects 8h of work is all that's needed to accomplish the work.
4. Work begins on this parent item.
5. Two days later, someone realizes another tasks is necessary, creates this task, and estimates it at 5h. Parent estimate is now 13h.

ohhh noooesss!!! the parent's original estimate should not have been increased to 13h. It should remain at 8h since that's the final estimate before work began. so my question is this ...

how do you "lock" the original estimate at a certain point in the workflow?

[Norman Abramovitz · Accepted solution]

Either sub-tasks rolls up its estimates or it does not. As common as it might be that people want to freeze the original estimate, it also common for people to not freeze the estimate. I would probably copy in a post-function the original esitimate to a custom field when switching into the in progress status.

If the issue enters and leaves the in-progress status and then enters in progess status again, the custom field would be set to the new estimated value.

I believe the JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions plugin provides the copy operation that you need to implement this solution.

[Tanner Wortham]

i like your post-function idea, norman. i think that will do the trick nicely. i haven't yet played with custom fields so this should be fun.

[Norman Abramovitz]

The JIRA Suite Utilities plugin should also work for you as well.

[Tanner Wortham]

i'm happy to say i already had both of those plugins installed. at this point, i'm trying to determine the best field type to provide this custom field. (Number seems obvious, but I'm on the prowl for something that perserves similar to original estimate -- as days, weeks, hours.)

[Norman Abramovitz]

Thank you, Tanner, for marking the answer correct. Did you find a custom field other than number that could hold a duration and display it correctly?

[Tanner Wortham]

sadly, no, norman. i've been racking my brain for days trying to find a solution. i even went so far as report it to Atlassian and to create another question. if you have any other nuggets of wisdom, i'm all ears. have a read.

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/67570/how-do-i-copy-aggregate-original-estimate-to-another-field

[Norman Abramovitz]

The only other thought I have without writing your own plugin for the custom field, is to write a javascript function that displays the value correctly. Then use a hidden field for the copy of the original estimate and another field that displays the value using the javascript function. You can attach the javascript to your Jira pages using one of these methods.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Fields+Allowing+Custom+HTML+or+JavaScript

[Tanner Wortham]

i'm still in search of a solution here. anyone have anything to offer?