How does ranking function across multiple boards

[Casey Daniell]

I have a board that contains many issues, for below lets say 27 items A - Z. If I have two boards,

one that shows all 27 items
one that shows a subset of items (showing one components issues from the project)

Board setup

All issues board shows:

A
B
C
D
E -- UI Component
F
G
...
...
...
W
X -- UI Component
Y
Z

UI Component Only Board shows:

E -- UI Component
X -- UI Component

Let's say between the items shown by component I have two issues I want to reorder. If I move issue X to just above E on my UI board, than on the All Issues board it's in the same postions, not a relitive positon. I want to use the UI board that shows a subset to allow an external team to manage their specific issues, without affecting the global ranking. (E.g., I thought these two issues would be swaped on the All Issue board, but still show their new location on the UI board)

What I want is:

All issues board shows:

A
B
C
D
X -- UI Component
F
G
...
...
...
W
E -- UI Component
Y
Z

UI Component Only Board shows:

X -- UI Component
E -- UI Component

What I am getting is:

All issues board shows:

A
B
C
D
X -- UI Component
E -- UI Component
F
G
...
...
...
W
Y
Z

UI Component Only Board shows:

X -- UI Component
E -- UI Component

TL;DR -- How does the JIRA Backlog board actually rank items?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

The rank is a global measure of where an issue is in the whole list of all of them.  Boards and projects are irrelevant to it directly.

[Casey Daniell]

So, if I have a project that actually has 500 active issues, and a team that needs to rank a subset of 50 of these issues, they can't really change the rank on their smaller board, or with quick filters on a board that shows all issues, since if will place the two issues directly next to each other? 

I need the smaller teams issues to effectively switch places, but preserve the existing "slots" on their global rank without dragging through row after row of issues. 

How do I do something like "have a dev team making changes to the product, but they need to dedicate 10% of their time to smaller fixes, or client's, that a totally different Product Manager sorts out" Right now the product manager working the smaller board radically changes the overall ranking by simply trying to adjust his or her product initiatives. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, you absolutely should rank on the developer boards.  Whilst you probably only have a sub-set of issues visible, Jira still ranks everything as though its a single list.

Yes, your product owners could interfere with each other's views but because it's a single list, it will still make sense.

[Daniel Eads]

Just pitching in that there's a pretty nice video explanation here (16 minutes). Nic has hit the crux of it (all the issues in the whole system are ranked against each other) but you may be interested in learning the details of the inner workings.

[Casey Daniell]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist--- the issue I am working to solve is I have UI and internationalization translation issues that are specific to international markets and we want to allow the i18n product manager to sort out her backlog without drastically affecting the main backlog.

So, if she decides to "swap" two items that are side-by-side on her simpler board, even if they are separated by 50 issues on the main teams board, they now are side by side on the global view, either both by the top most issue, if the second issue was moved in front of the first, or below the second issue if the top issue was moved below the second issues seen. 

Maybe this is just a training thing, but I thought it preserved rank across all these issues for some reason (even the ones we are skipping that aren't seen on the UI backlog view.

@Daniel Eads -- Nicely explained video. I wish the presenter was a bit more polished, but the deck really helped out. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It is about training, yes, those who are re-ranking should understand that when they move issue A above B, it is a logical necessity to rank A above everything that is between A and B, even when that is not currently visible to them.

[Matt Mullaney]

Can I just ask for some clarification:

If a Project has issues on multiple boards, where is the global ranking managed from?  The Backlog?  Or will reordering issues in ANY column on ANY board affect the global ranking of that issue?  Seems like there should be a board/screen dedicated to managing and viewing the priority of all of the issues at a project level.   I know that Portfolio can help with this, because you can order your issues there and then commit/push them down to the JIRA/team boards.  But my new company does not use Portfolio and I am confused as to how to best accomplish this.  

On a related note, is it possible to increase/decrease the ranking of a child issue (e.g. Story, Bug, Task) automatically by increasing/decreasing the Rank of its parent Epic??

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The ranking is managed in any place that allows for ranking - boards and backlogs.

As the rank is global, yes, any change of rank in any backlog re-ranks the issues across the entire system.  You have one list of issues, ranked completely.  Boards are just views of a subset.  And, yes, you can have a board with a filter of "", which would show you everything.

Epics are a bit of a kludge in Jira.  They are special issues, not a continer.  They have a rank because they are an issue, but re-ranking them has no effect on the stories they contain.  (Unlike stories and sub-tasks)

If you want to do stack-ranking of Epics, I'm afraid you need Portfolio or Align.

[Jason Kosecki]

Is these a way to limit rankings on one board compared to another? Let's say I was able to create a board that showed all issues that were only able to be ranked by PM as a master list. Then a separate board that was viewed by the development team in a scrum format with planned sprints in the backlog view, but always maintaining the order set in the master list by PM. 

I know the way to prevent ranking is by restricting the edit and schedule functions, but this seems to be per project and not per board. Is this possible? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, there's no way to limit it, that would defeat the purpose of global ranking.

You can restrict the usage with project permissions, but as you say, they're not necessarily going to work if a board is drawing issues from more than one project.