Roll up sub-task time to the parent in Jira

Total the time logged on sub-tasks against the story, and up to the epic — including time logged on the parent itself.

Most time gets logged on sub-tasks. Most reporting is wanted at the story or epic level. Jira does not add the one up into the other.

Building it

1. Create report, source = your space (or a filter of the work you care about).
2. Switch on include children.
3. On the Structure tab, keep the Time spent and Remaining estimate measures. Both come preset on the Program progress template.
4. Save.

Why time uses "sum" and points do not

This is the whole subtlety of the page.

• A story estimated at 3 points with sub-tasks totaling 5 has one estimate. Counting 8 would be wrong, so story points roll up as children if any.
• A story with 2 hours logged on it directly, and sub-tasks with 5 hours, really did take 7. So time rolls up as sum: the item's own value plus its children's.

RollGrid sets each measure's mode accordingly by default, and you can change either. If a total looks about double what you expect, the mode is the first place to look. See roll-up modes.

Rolling up by person instead

To ask "how much time did each person log", a roll-up is the wrong shape — add a Timesheet tab to the same report. One read of Jira feeds both tabs.

Nothing logged is not zero logged

A story with no worklogs anywhere beneath it shows a dash (–), not 0h. "Nobody has logged anything" and "somebody logged nothing" are different, and the dash keeps them apart.