How to show sub-task progress on the parent issue in Jira

A story has five sub-tasks, three are done — and the story itself still just says “In Progress,” giving no sense of how far along it is. Multiply that across an epic and you’re left guessing at progress or counting checkboxes by hand. Jira knows the children’s state; it just doesn’t roll it up. Here’s how to fix that.

What Jira shows — and what it hides

On a parent issue, Jira gives you:

• A sub-task checklist, a small progress bar, and a done/total count (e.g. “3 of 5”).

What it doesn’t give you:

• A percent complete number on the parent or the epic — the bar is visual only, with no percentage label.
• Rolled-up story points or estimates — Jira keeps points per issue and never totals a parent’s children.
• A rolled-up figure on the epic — the sub-task count sits on the immediate parent, but the epic above it shows nothing aggregated from the tree below.

So the data exists on the children, but the parent and the epic don’t reflect it, and “how far along is this?” becomes a manual tally.

The fix: roll the children up to the parent

Tally aggregates the children up to the parent and the epic — status, story points, estimates and percent complete — and shows it right on the parent and epic issue view:

• A real progress figure — percent complete and done/total on the parent and epic, not just on the sub-task list.
• Points and estimates totalled — the parent reflects the sum of its children, so an epic’s size and burn-down make sense.
• Visible on the parent and the epic — the rolled-up figure shows on the issue view, so the epic reflects everything moving beneath it instead of looking static.

Built on Forge, it’s computed in your tenant with no data egress.

The takeaway

Jira tracks sub-task state but doesn’t roll it up, so parents and epics look static while their children move. Aggregate status, points and percent complete to the parent and the epic, and progress becomes something you can see at a glance instead of count by hand. For the related story-point question, see how to roll up story points to an epic in Jira.