Estimated Time on Sub Tasks

It would be great to add the estimated time on sub tasks.

It’s great to see tasks estimated time but often, I have a task that will last a couple of weeks with subtasks breaking the task down into detail.
When I plan my weeks I like to highlight all the tasks I’m doing and see the total time but, sub tasks aren’t taken into account because there is no time assigned.

2 Likes

It would be really useful to be able to estimate on subtasks and have them roll up into the parent task estimation number. Not having this feature makes using the subtasks a challenge as we cannot perform proper resource planning.

7 Likes

This is a well known issue: subtasks don’t inherit anything from their parent task, they are not part of any project unless you make them.

Hi folks,

We already have a thread on this topic, so I’ve gone ahead and merged this post with the existing conversation we have! I’ll keep you posted on this main thread when I have an update on my end!

Thanks

The new grid view is almost there now. We’re now able to quickly add subtasks to a parent task, making the breakdown and estimation process very smooth. The entire section automatically rolls up and displays a total estimation for the section in the bottom – very nice! Adding subtasks this way will circumnavigate the whole Custom fields needed on subtasks - #71 by sonia.moaiery issue, letting me add an estimation to the subtask without manually having to add the subtask to the project the parent task is in. Very nice!

There are two things that still are dealbreakers for me that I need a fix for.

  1. First and foremost, in order to gain a better overview of the project, I need to be able to roll up the sum of estimated time on subtasks onto its parent task. I see a couple of approaches:

A) Display rolled up time only when subtasks are minimized.
B) Always display rolled up time, but let the user click in the cell and add additional estimation to the parent task, which would be added to the total sum, along with the rolled up values from the child tasks.

  1. Second, while I love the expand/minimize subtasks feature in the grid view, I cant understand why you chose to only allow this in a single hierarchical level. I would like to be able to nest multiple layers of subtasks to gain a granular view of the project. For example, creating a Milestone (e.g. a sprint or an epic, for example) and grouping many tasks inside it. However, when I tried that I noticed that the “expand subtasks” feature only allowed me to expand a single hierarchical level. In addition, it removed the automatic column summary, as if the subtasks nested 2 layers deep weren’t recognized anymore:

@Marie, is the team aware of these issues? Do you have any idea whether fixes for the aforementioned two problems are on the roadmap?

3 Likes

The ability to add hours to the subtask is great but when using the Workload option to track hours in the teams unless you manually sum up the hours for each sub-task and add it in then they are not taken into account - creates unnecessary manual work where this should be a time saver - are there any plans to add the SUM logic to the sub-tasks?

If there is a more recent thread on this topic please let me know so I can add my voice there!

6 Likes

Where are we on this? Can I get my subtasks in my Milestone to total up automatically on the Milestone card? What about Hours worked?

Nothing new, completion status-dates-custom fields on subtasks are still unrelated to their parent task. Only custom made automation would help for now.

Hello @Cherie_Bellingham,

the new time tracking feature that Asana released might be helpful. You can set the estimated time and then also track the time which also supports subtask roll ups.
For more info see here: New! Track time on your Tasks in Asana ⏱

In order to see your hours per subtask in the Portfolio Workload, you can use a hack of creating a project called “Ghost Project.” Then when you have a subtask with hours applied to it, you can add the Ghost Project to just that subtask with the command, “Tab+P” to bring up add to Project, then type in Ghost Project. Make sure you add Ghost Project to your Porfolio, and you’ll now see the hours per subtask showing up for each person to figure out their actual workload capacity. The reason this works is that those subtasks actually show up as tasks under Ghost Project, so the hours will pull into the Portfolio Workload. It’s annoying that this isn’t something Asana thought out, but thought I’d share the hack we use!

2 Likes

The estimated hours is possibly the biggest gamecahnger for our company hownever there is a final step that is currently missing.
Its great that inside a Project view - the estimated hours in subtasks accumulate to the parent task - the issue is that this does not then roll through to the portfiloio section when managing the workload. Nor does this clearly roll through into the Gant/Timeline view clearly.

Thanks @Amanda_Wahula for your explanation. Being a new Asana user, I thought I was going crazy looking at the Portfolio and not being able to see the subtask time tracked as well. :laughing:

It looks like it has been roughly 3 years since this was last discussed on this thread, does any one know if the development team is working on a way to incorporate the subtask’s estimated time into the portfolio, instead of having to do the “Ghost Project” workaround?

The Universal Workload (for Enterprise) takes subtasks into account. So either this will come to regular Workload, or they’ll keep it as a way to make Universal Workload more attractive…