Can i maintain the rank of an epic or initiative even if i elevate one of the stories?

Question

My product owners have ranked their epics in the JIRA portfolio view.  But in their boards, they sometimes want to work some stories from a lower ranked epic early, but they want to preserve the ordering/ranking of the epics themselves.

It appears that if i pick a story from a later ranked epic, it re-ranks the epics rather than preserving the epic rank independent of the stories and how they are allocated to the backlog.

Is there a way to solve this problem?

Allard van Helbergen · Answer

Yes, the ranking of epics in Portfolio for Jira is affected by the issue that are returned in the plan. So, excluding issues from the plan or filtering them out in the scope view will affect the displayed ranking of epics in Portfolio.

Conversely, changing the ranking of an epic in Portfolio will not affect stories that are part of the epic in Jira but excluded from the plan.

Rochelle Kempe · Answer

If I exclude the stories from my portfolio view, will that resolve the problem?

Allard van Helbergen · Answer

Hi @Rochelle Kempe,

The short answer is no. If a story from a lower epic is rank upwards, it automatically affects the ranking of its epic in Portfolio for Jira.

The longer answer is that the ranking behaviour differs slightly between Jira and Portfolio for Jira. In Jira the ranking of epics and the contained sotries are independent, whereas in Portfolio for Jira the rank of an epic is taken from the ranking of the stories within it. Therefore changing the ranking of a story in Jira will always affect the ranking in Portfolio for Jira.

It was previously discussed in this question.
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Epic-ranking-in-Portfolio-2-0/qaq-p/198306

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Allard