Time Spent not being logged properly in sprint burn down chart

[Ken Ng]

We have a subtask that was given estimate of 1 day value.  On the 24th of Aug, they changed it to 2hrs since they over estimated.  While on that same day the 24th, they logged 6 hours.  Also on the 25th they also logged another 3 hours.  Why isn't the burn down charts showing the proper values of 9 hours ?

Sprint burn down chart below.....<-- NOT showing total of 9 hours spent on the subtask

Jira Work Log Audit Trail......

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

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[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Hi Ken,

This is failing because you do not put sprint estimates on sub-tasks - they are not sprint items, and should not have estimates.

Scrum only looks at Sprint items when drawing up the burn-down chart, and sub-tasks are fragments of sprint items, not part of a sprint themselves.

Burn-down looks only at what you commit to, and what you achieve (done, or not done), there is no partial completion - an issue with no sub-tasks done is not done, with one sub-task done, it's not done, with 99% of sub-tasks done, it's not done, it's only done when 100% of them are done.

So there's no point estimating them, they tell you nothing about whether the issue is done or not.

If you put sprint estimates on sub-tasks, the velocity chart works fine because it ignores them, but the rest of Jira goes on to double-count them, because it does not expect them to be there.

You have two options:

• Use sub-tasks as intended - as parts of sprint items.  Get rid of the estimates on them
• Create a strategy for putting them on sub-tasks, and automate how it works for Jira  (The most obvious one is "add up all the estimates on sub-tasks and add that to the parent", but that will fail, most people who try it carry on double-counting, or half counting, you have to be a bit more clever)

[Ken Ng]

Thanks Nic for your response.

[Jay Whitman]

The issue is not the sprint estimates but rather the logged hours represented in the Time Spent column.  If we want to see how much time was spent on an issue within a sprint, the table under the Burndown Chart with Remaining Time Estimate selected seems to be set up nicely to do that, if it was accurately and consistently showing the actual logged hours in the Time Spent column.   

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The burndown chart is only going to show you the data from the sprint items.

[Jay Whitman]

Then why does it show some logged hour records that occurred during the sprint but not all of the logged hours that occurred during the sprint?   It shows the work logged on Aug. 25 (3 hours) but doesn't show the work logged on Aug. 24 (6 hours).  It only shows "scope changed" on Aug. 24 but with 0 hours.  It's as if Jira is not picking up logged hours if they are logged at the same time the sub-task was created.  The Work Logged tab of the sub-task shows the right logged hours (3 hours and 6 hours), but the Burndown chart isn't showing the logged hours of the sub-task when it's at the same time as the "scope change" record.  That's where the inconsistency seem to lie, regardless of whether or not sub-tasks should be used for sprint work.