Estimating an issue
Estimate an issue
Before a sprint starts, you need to enter the Original Estimates of your issues. And as you work on the issues during the sprint, you may need to adjust the Remaining Estimates as necessary.
To enter the Original Estimate, do the following for each issue:
- Navigate to the Backlog of your desired board.
- Click the issue that you want to set the Original Estimate for.
- In the Issue Detail View, type your estimate in the Estimate field.
The type of units used by the 'Estimate' field (e.g. hours) is affected by your Estimation Statistic — see Configuring estimation and tracking.
To adjust the Remaining Estimate:
- Navigate to the Active sprints of your desired board.
- Click the issue that you want to adjust the Remaining Estimate for.
In the Issue Detail View, type your estimate in the Remaining field.
The type of units used by the 'Remaining' field (e.g. hours) is affected by your Tracking Statistic — see Configuring estimation and tracking.
When using the Burndown Chart, note that sub-task behavior can vary, depending on whether or not remaining estimate and time spent is enabled for your board.
Sub-task behavior when remaining estimate and time spent is enabled | Sub-task behavior when remaining estimate and time spent is disabled |
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If you add a sub-task to an issue that's already in an active sprint, the sub-task is treated as scope change. The scope change is also indicated in the Burndown Chart. | If you add a sub-task to an issue that's already in an active sprint, the sub-task is also treated as scope change. However, scope change is not indicated in the Burndown Chart for the sub-task. |
Time estimates of sub-tasks are rolled up to the parent task. This means that the parent task will have the total sum of all remaining estimates of the sub-tasks. | Time estimates are tracked individually across the sub-tasks and the parent task itself. |
See Burndown Chart for more details.
Concepts about estimation
Here are some concepts to consider when estimating issues in JIRA Software.