Is there a way to rank issues in a sprint by priority in next-gen Jira?

[will.portman]

Is there a way to rank issues in a sprint by priority in next-gen Jira?

I know about the "priority" field for an issue, but this only has 5 options (highest to lowest), so isn't useful for a sprint with, say, 20 issues, where 5 of them might have the same "Medium" priority.

I also know about drag-and-drop functionality (of course), which is what we currently use for ranking issues. However, on multiple occasions I have accidentally dragged-and-dropped an issue in the wrong place when browsing the backlog, and there's no way to undo this. Also, drag-and-drop is useful when you're in the "backlog" view, but not in the "board" view where issues are spread across multiple columns and it would be helpful to know if, for example, the issue at the top of "in-progress" is ranked #5 while the issue at the top of "todo" is ranked #1.

What would be ideal is a "ranking" field by which you could assign each issue in a sprint (including issues of different types - e.g. user stories, tasks, and bugs) a unique ranking value -- such as 1-20 for a sprint w/ 20 issues -- and then sort by this ranking field.

Please let me know if anything like this exists, or if not, if there is a handy workaround. So far I haven't been able to find anything by browsing this forum & Atlassian documentation. Thanks!

[will.portman]

Hi Earl,

Thanks for the answer - appreciate it.

I understand that filters for priority values combined with drag-and-drop can help to prioritize the backlog. Also those links are helpful, thanks.

However it sounds like what I'm looking for doesn't quite exist. Specifically, what I'm looking for is the ability to add a field to issues to assign them priority values (e.g. 1-20), and then the ability to sort ASC by this value.

No worries and I figured probably this functionality didn't exist, given I couldn't find it with my own Googling & browsing of the Atlassian forum. Thanks for confirming.

Will

[Michael Walker]

Hey Will,

I'm curious if you were able to find a solution that worked for you - your description of what you need is almost identical to something that would be helpful for my team as well.

Any luck?

Thanks,

Michael

[rsteers]

+1 

Great suggestion Will.

[Earl McCutcheon]

HI Will;

Ordering by Rank ASC is a requirement for the drag&drop to work on your board, if you define a static value to order by you cannot use the dynamic ranking options in parallel.  It's an Either/or scenarion in this case.

An options you can leverage to better manage priorities is to set up quick filters for the priority values that you can user to quickly identify everything at a specific priority level you want at the top of your list, then highlight them, right click, and select "rank to top", so that all the highest priority issues are now ranked higher and you can then deselect the quick filter and rearrange dynamically via drag and drop to rearrange based on any other defined criteria such as a lower priority issue that is a blocker for the higher priority issue and must be completed before you can start on the higher priority issue.

I would also recomend checking out the following Blog post guided on backlog grooming and best practices for additional tips and tricks:

• How to manage a product backlog with ease
• Groom your backlog like a boss with Jira Software
• The product backlog: your ultimate to-do list

Regards,
Earl