Subtasks or checklists?

By Darko Bačić, founder of App Tube · 9 October 2026

A subtask is a small task inside a bigger task. It can have its own owner, dates and time. A checklist is a list of quick ticks inside one task, with no owner or date of its own.

The rule is short. Make a subtask when someone owns the step or it takes real time. Make a checklist line when it is a quick tick for the person who owns the task. It is one of the plain explainers on our blog.

An example

Ivan has a task: "Add Apple Pay and Google Pay". It belongs to an epic called "New checkout page". An epic is a big piece of work split into smaller tasks. What an epic is has more on them. Some steps in Ivan's task are real work:

• Apple Pay on iPhone. Luka does this one. It takes a day.
• Google Pay on Android. Ivan does this one. It takes a day.
• Test both on old phones. Mira does this one. It takes an afternoon.

Each of those has its own person and its own time. They are subtasks.

Other steps are quick ticks. Turn on payments in the Apple account. Add the Google Pay logo. Fix the line about payments in the privacy text. Each takes five minutes, and Ivan does all of them. Those are checklist lines.

When to use it

Make a subtask when one of these is true:

• Someone other than the task owner does it.
• It takes more than an hour.
• It needs its own due date.
• You want to track time on it.

Make a checklist line when it takes minutes, the task owner does it, and nobody else needs to know.

If you are not sure, start with a line. Turn it into a subtask when it grows. And if a step grows past a few days, it may be a task of its own. Epic vs story vs task shows where each size belongs.

Common mistakes

• A subtask for every tiny step. A task with twenty subtasks fills the screen with noise.
• Hiding real work in a checklist. "Build the payment screen" as one tick hides a week of work. Nobody can see it is late.
• Two people on one checklist. If Luka and Ivan share the ticks, nobody is sure who does what.
• Splitting a task before you start. Add steps as you find them.

How devBoard handles it

devBoard has subtasks and no checklists, on purpose. A subtask is a full task. It can have assignees, a due date, an estimate and its own timer. Time tracking works the same on it as on a task. That covers every step that matters to someone else. For quick ticks, write a few lines in the task description. You cannot tick them off, but you can delete each line when it is done. We chose one way to split a task, so nobody has to pick between two each time. Epics, tasks and subtasks shows the levels, and the setup guide walks you through your first subtask.