Portfolio Issue Ranking Behavior in Plans using Multiple Projects/Boards on Setup

[Matthew Leach]

How are issues such as Initiatives, Epics or Stories ranked when your issues sources are comprised of multiple projects and boards?

For example, if I have issue sources including Scrum Board A (Filter = Project 1) and Scrum Board B (Filter = Project 2), where will the top ranked story from each backlog be displayed in the plan when the Story issue type filter is selected?

I'd imagine you would have to test this by creating a JIRA board including both projects in a filter and see how that compares to the Portfolio Plan. 

[Thomas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Matthew Leach,

The first thing to realize is that all the issues in Jira (regardless of their projects and types) share the same ranking. So your issues from Project 1 are ranked against those of Project 2, the easiest way to visualize that would be to perform a JQL search with something like: "project in (project1, project2) ORDER BY rank".

When creating an a new issue it is ranked last until it gets re-ranked (e.g. In a board or in Portfolio).

With that in mind, Portfolio has its own way of handling hierarchy ranking and I'd suggest reading my answer on this community question: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/How-does-JIRA-backlog-order-and-portfolio-rank-influence-each/qaq-p/705253#M18864

Cheers,

The Portfolio for Jira server team

[Matthew Leach]

Thanks for the reply @Thomas - I wasn't entirely clear in my description compared to my title. I understand how overall ranking works, but how are issues initially ranked from multiple projects when imported?

For example if I just maintained two distinct boards for each project: Project A's Rank 1 issue versus Project B's Rank 1 issue - which will be the highest ranked item when I import the two into Portfolio for JIRA and why?

[Thomas]

As mentioned previously "When creating an a new issue it is ranked last until it gets re-ranked", this actually applies globally.

This mean the rank order when put together will be the creation order (unless the issues were manually re-ranked at some point in time obviously).

[Matthew Leach]

Thanks Thomas! Makes sense. Clearly overlooked that portion of the response😀