Jira epic progress bar by story points, not count
Checked against Atlassian’s documentation on 26 October 2026.
You want a progress bar on your epics, and one that means something. On Jira’s own bar, a done 1-point story moves the bar as far as a done 13-point one. This page says where Jira draws a bar by itself, what it counts, how to get a % by story points with Jira alone, then what Sumline shows on the epic.
What Jira does by itself
- The epic’s child work items show a % done. It is the share of children whose status category is Done, not a measure of effort or story points (JRACLOUD-80273, “Won’t Do”, August 2024).
- The timeline’s progress bar “shows the progress of all child work items, including subtasks”. Turn it on by adding the Status column, then Progress under View settings (Atlassian). It shows only the children in the epic’s own space (Atlassian).
Both count work items. An epic with one 13-point story done and two 2-point stories open is 33% on the bar and 76% by points. A bar on the epic that counts story points is not in either place.
A bar by points with Jira alone
Atlassian publishes the formulas for a parent’s % done, by work item count and by story points, for an Automation rule (knowledge base). The rule, its two formulas and where it stops are in Jira epic % complete by points and by work items. It writes a number into a field, not a bar, and runs only when its trigger does.
On a dashboard instead? That is a different page: Epic progress on a Jira dashboard.
With Sumline
Sumline is our app. It draws the bar on the epic itself, by points:
- Two progress bars in its panel on the epic, by estimate and by work item count, over the epic’s whole tree, subtasks included. The 13-point story and the two 2-point ones read 76% by estimate and 33% by count, side by side.
- The same bars on every epic in its table, per space or across the spaces you choose, and on its dashboard gadget.
- Warnings beside the bar, such as work items with no estimate, which the points figure leaves out.
- “Done” follows Jira’s status category, so renamed and custom workflows count correctly.
Sumline only reads, so its bars are not a Jira field you can search with JQL. How each percentage is worked out is in How the numbers are calculated.
