Is there a way to prioritize the Kanban backlog, other than manual sorting?

[Emile Bouthillier]

When I had my backlog in a standard Kanban column, I was using Swimlanes to automatically prioritize my issues based on a couple of fields (business value, effort estimate, etc,) and that resulted in a coarsely prioritized backlog. I had a swimlane for High-vlaue-low-effort, another one for High-vlaue-medium-effort, High-value-high-effort, Medium-value-low-effort, etc.

Is there a way to do the same thing in a Kanban backlog? Or should I go back to default Kanban and use my swimlane trick?

Thank you!

Emile

[Deleted user · Accepted solution]

Use an "order by" in the JQL filter of your board

[Emile Bouthillier]

I am not sure if an "Order By" can work. My real goal would be to assign a priority score to each issues and order by priority scores. 

My priorities would be set by a couple of factors, lets say A, B, C and D.

Where, for example:

A = Number of users being affected

B = Impact on User Experience

C = Impact on Sales/Support team

D = Effort estimate

My dream priority formula would be: Priority = (A*B+C)/D

Now, because I can't seem to be able to do that in JIRA, I am doing the following instead as an approximation (in Kanban Swimlanes):

High priority Swimlane JQL: (A > 10 OR B >10  OR C > 20 AND (D < 5))

Medium-High priority Swimlane JQL: (A > 10 OR B >10  OR C > 20 AND (D < 10))

Medium priority Swimlane JQL:  (A > 5 OR B >5  OR C > 10 AND (D < 10))

Medium-Low priority Swimlane JQL:  (A > 5 OR B >5  OR C > 10 AND (D < 20))

Low priority Swimlane JQL:  (A > 2 OR B >2  OR C > 5 AND (D < 20))

Very-Low priority Swimlane JQL:  (A <= 2 AND B <=2  AND C <= 5 OR (D >= 20))

And I use these swimlanes as my way to prioritize.

Is there a better way to do this in a Kanban backlog? Is there a way to multiply, add, subtract and divide field values to come up with a prioritization method?

Thanks!

[Deleted user]

Now we are talking.

So, you are asking about calculated fields or to use a matrix to calculate priority. You need and add-on like scriptrunner and create a Scripted field or a listener which updates priority and then use that field with the order by.

I would go for the scripted field.

[Emile Bouthillier]

Thanks a lot Cristian!

I will check out ScriptRunner.

Thanks again.

[Joshwa Marcalle]

Hi Emile, 

Jira portfolio is the best way to do it. Drag and drop entire initiatives and see the changes on the backlog