Ranking issue in Porfolio
Asked by Kevin Hamm:

Im having an issue with ranking of issues in portfolio.

Expected behavior - Feature can be dragged to top of backlog and all children of the feature (epics and stories) move up in the backlog. After committing, the Feature, Epic, and Story should be highest ranked in portfolio and scrum boards.

Actual Behavior - Dragging the Feature to the top of portfolio results in each level of hierarchy showing at the top of the backlog. After committing, the Feature, Epic, and Story drops back down far into the backlog in portfolio and the boards. Looking at the issue detail screen, it actually shows the rank was lowered after the commit.

To test, i created a test feature, with a child Epic and a child story. When i drag it to the top of portfolio (the feature) it shows that the rank of the feature, epic, and story are all at the top when i select each level of hierarchy. Upon committing, i find that the Feature, Epic, and Story are near the bottom of the backlog in portfolio. Looking at the story and epic detail view, it shows the rank was lowered. Very strange. This problem started a couple months ago.

Portfolio for Jira - 3.1.0 {#toc-hId--1437492815}
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Jira Version:7.13.1 (ENTERPRISE)

Jira Agile Version:7.13.0-DAILY20190110202320


Answers:
author: Earl McCutcheon
body: Hello Kevin,

There is a BUG in the live plans that is causing the ranking behavior you are seeing where the parent re-rank at the initiative hierarchy does not respect the rank positioning of the child issues, and causes the rank position to bounce around depending on the positioning of the epics original position, additional details can be seen here:

* <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JPOSERVER-2493>

The behavior is still not fully corrected but as noted in the comments of the BUG there are some changes to the ranking in the new experience that will help out:
> Ranking in the new Portfolio 3.0 experience should now be closer to the expected experience you describe in this ticket. We've now made ranking independent, which means that the rank in Portfolio should align with the rank in Jira.

With a bit more details on this change to the new layout relating to the rank independence across hierarchies in the 3.X new experience covered in ["Changes in the improved interface"](https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfolioserver/changes-in-the-new-experience-961780550.html):
> Previously, when you'd rank an epic with child issues higher, the ranking of its child issues would also be higher. When these changes were committed to Jira, the child issues would also be ranked higher in Jira.
>
> This can be confusing, especially if your teams have already ranked issues in their backlogs or active sprints, and the child issues are suddenly ranked higher.
>
> In the improved interface, the ranking of child issues is now independent of the ranking of their parent issues. If you rank a parent epic higher, the ranking of its child issues in Jira will stay as is.

Regards,  
Earl

comments: author: Skalski Mateusz
body: Hello,

Sorry for reviving an old topic but I have w big problem with the removal of ranking dependency between parent/child. Let me describe my use case:

At some point there is a need to change the focus in the project, that means rank an initiative higher than the other. I drag an initiative but there is no actual change in the plan because child epics and child stories of those epics stay where they were and I have to manually first drag all the epics to a specific place in the plan between 2 initiatives (one above and one below parent initiative) and then do the same with the stories of those epics. Even with a bulk change it's a hassle. Without this, only a change in the initiative does not make any real change in the plan, developers have still the same priority for their stories.

I honestly cannot find any use for the case where you only drag an initiative higher but decide to keep the stories ranked low. That's a false output where one might think that highest ranked initiative is the initiative that is being focus on but actually it doesn't matter, only stories rank matters. The previous behaviour allowed me to control the plan on high level without having to move tens of stories each time I need to change the priority of an initiative.

Given this use case, could you at least bring back this functionality as an option (even disabled by default)?

Best regards,

Mateusz


Tags: advanced-roadmaps