Strategy for multiple backlogs?

[Kevin Teich]

I have multiple areas of work that I want to do each sprint. The Themes model works well here; I have assigned a Theme to all my stories and I can check how much of each Theme I'm working on each sprint with the Themes report. But the backlog/Scope view in Portfolio gets pretty unmanageable for rank prioritization; there's no way to only consider one Theme at a time and sort those items. Is there a better way to make a plan that merges all Themes together, but lets me sort items in a single Theme better? I think a Theme filter in the Scope view would do this well, but I also wonder if there's a better workflow in general.

[Roi Fine · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin,

You can actually filter the scope table by themes. In the filters bar, select "more" than you will see a dropdown selection of 4 more filters, one of them is themes. I hope it will do the trick.

Cheers,

[Kevin Teich]

I must be blind; that's great, thanks!

Any suggestions as how to manage the prioritization of items in different Themes to help make sure Theme targets are met? That is, if I want to spend 70% on Theme A and 30% on Theme B, with a backlog of 100+ items, how should I interleave the items to make sure the scheduling algorithm picks items to maintain that ratio?

[Roi Fine]

Putting aside dependencies and other external date factors such as releases, Portfolio's algo takes into account rank as the main factor for scheduling. I think your direction is good, there is a lot of trial and error in the scope section but after a few times the theme report should show your desired outcome.

I hope that helps,

[Kevin Teich]

If the answer is "trial and error" that's not great, but it's good to know I'm not missing anything. I'm still interested in better workflows if anybody has any tips.

Thanks for your help!