Parent-child relationships between tasks & effort estima

1) What should I do with the "estimate" field of a parent
task if there are children tasks? Set it to "No estimate"?
It doesn't appear to "roll up" a total estimate of the sum
of the children's estimates (like a story-task relationship does).

I an early stage of the iteration plan editor's development, we actually
accumulated the estimates of child task for each parent task. However,
while working with the editor, we found it more useful to not handle the
estimate of parent tasks in a special way, as there is usually work
associated with the parent task as well. That is why we only accumulate
the estimates/progress for top level work items, such as stories.

2) Both the parent and children tasks show up as "My Work",
but their relationship is flattened so that it isn't obvious there is
a parent/child relationship and it is the children I should be working
on

The work item relationships are flattened by design, so that the work
items can be planned/rearranged without restrictions. Additionally, as
we expected the parent task to have work associated as well, it is
intended to show them in the My Work view.

Perhaps I am not using this relationship properly? Please advise what
I should be doing.

You could create a new work item type to group your work. Mark it as a
top level work item type. Doing so will show the accumulated
estimates/progress for the child work items. Additionally, you can
assign a different icon to the work item type, in order for the work
items to be distinguishable in the My Work view easily.

--
MikeS
Jazz Agile Planning team

I am using the way you mentioned; the new work item type called plan and it works well to me.

it can accumulate the estimates/correction/timespent of its children..

However, my problem is that I am not able to set the new work item type as the 'top-level work item type'.. whenever I save it, the system gives an error saying:

Save Failed
java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException

Could you please kindly help?

You could create a new work item type to group your work. Mark it as a
top level work item type. Doing so will show the accumulated
estimates/progress for the child work items. Additionally, you can
assign a different icon to the work item type, in order for the work
items to be distinguishable in the My Work view easily.

--
MikeS
Jazz Agile Planning team

However, my problem is that I am not able to set the new work item
type as the 'top-level work item type'.. whenever I save it, the
system gives an error saying:

Save Failed
java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException

Is there an error logged either in eclipse's log file or on the server?
If you could post the exception's stacktrace, this would be very helpful.

Thanks.

--
MikeS
Jazz Agile Planning team

Your recommendation to create a new work item type to group the work worked like a charm! I didn't have any trouble classifying it as a top-level item... love the % rollup!

I also added a new work item type: top level story. I would like to see a sum up of the story points of the sub stories, or the sum up of the task estimates in the parent story. I do not see either. What am I doing wron

I also added a new work item type: top level story. I would like to see a sum up of the story points of the sub stories, or the sum up of the task estimates in the parent story. I do not see either. What am I doing wron

Hello,

I have set Story, Plan Item & Enhancement as Top-Level Work Item Types in the Process Configuration->Project Configuration->Configuration Data->Iteration Plans section of my project area.

My understanding by reading the above notes are, if I did this, the parent work items (like plan items) should show a rollup of the estimates, but I don't see this happening.

Anything I am missing? Also, apart from estimates, are other fields like Time Spent and Due also expected to be rolled up in some fashion?

Thanks!

In addition you have to add the progress presentation to the editor
presentation configuration in the process spec for the work item types
Plan Item & Enhancement. Take the Story presentation configuration as an
example.

Regards Dirk
Agile Planning Component

pshanker wrote:

Hello,

I have set Story, Plan Item & Enhancement as Top-Level Work Item
Types in the Process Configuration->Project
Configuration->Configuration Data->Iteration Plans section of
my project area.

My understanding by reading the above notes are, if I did this, the
parent work items (like plan items) should show a rollup of the
estimates, but I don't see this happening.

Anything I am missing? Also, apart from estimates, are other fields
like Time Spent and Due also expected to be rolled up in some
fashion?

Thanks!