Why can I not create a sprint with ranking disabled?

Question

From the JIRA manual, I can read this about creating Sprints:

"Ranking is not enabled: You can only create sprints, if you have enabled ranking for your board."

What I cannot find is any explanation as to WHY?

Why would other sorting order of backlog have anything to do with the ability to create sprints??

Maybe there is an obvious answer but I cannot see it... thankful if someone can explain.

My option now is to enable ranking to be able to create a Sprint, and then disable it again, but it makes no sense.

Sergio Castillo_y8g74q · Answer

Hello Anup,

your explanation doesn't make sense whatsoever.

Like you said, a backlog is prioritized by the po and sm, as so I want to use the priority field for this matter, and then I want the backlog to be sorted by priority field.

If I cannot sort my backlog per priority and allow me to create a sprint based of off it, then what is the priority field good for? Under the environment you describe the priority field is completely useless, nothing more but a traffic light to be completely ignored because I won't be manually changing ticket ranking and updating the priority as well, a tool is not for duplicating the work.

Besides, in all jira instances I've used the priority field has always been there by default, so I don't think jira admins are just adding it to look "cool" because it is indeed included on jira by default.

Is there a better explanation?

unknown · Answer

Hey Malte -

The reason it's setup this way, probably goes back to one of the fundamentals of SCRUM methodology where a backlog is not intended to be a list of tasks, but is meant to be a prioritized (or ordered) set of items, groomed by a product manager/ scrum master to reflect the team's priorities.

Your workaround hack should work :)

Best,

Anup