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  • 1.  Changing order of portfolio items changes their order in other pages

    Posted Apr 21, 2020 11:46 AM
    I recently started using portfolios (features and initiatives) for some of our team's larger strategic initiatives. I did not, however, create a new project (which may have been a mistake; don't know). I am not too concerned with tracking and metrics right now as much as grouping my stories together.

    For example, we have an initiative to deliver a product enhancement that will touch many different areas in the product. I created the feature and I created the stories before the work is put into a sprint, placing them in the order in which I want the work to be done. These stories need to be worked on in a specified order, relative to the overall portfolio, but independent of the priority for the stories & defects in any given sprint (which will have work not associated with the portfolio).

    When I'm looking at the work in the Portfolio view, I see the stories and they are in the order I want them to be. However, once I move a story into a sprint, it gets placed at the top of the sprint. This would be fine if I didn't have other work going on that is of higher priority. So I move the story to the proper priority order for the spring and, ugh!, the story is now in a different order when looking at the portfolio. If I reorder the portfolio, my sprint is messed up.

    Can someone please tell me if I can "have my cake and eat it too" or if the problem is because I didn't create the portfolio in a different project.

    thanks!

    ------------------------------
    Karen Gwynn
    still learning ...
    IData, Inc.
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  • 2.  RE: Changing order of portfolio items changes their order in other pages
    Best Answer

    Posted May 01, 2020 11:53 AM
    Once the stories are added to a sprint, maybe your team could use a different method than rank to denote relative priority? For example, in the Notes field you could put Priority 1 for the highest story, Priority 2 for the next-highest, and so on. Then show that field in each card on the board.


  • 3.  RE: Changing order of portfolio items changes their order in other pages

    Posted May 01, 2020 04:46 PM
    Edited by Mitch Goldman May 01, 2020 04:47 PM
    On a similar note, I would append the title of each with a numeric value representing the relative work priority. Set that up while in the ranked portfolio view. Number each by 10's (10, 20, 30, etc...)  This way if new stories are identified that need to get inserted between existing stories, there will be room for inserting those in the sequence (old BASIC programmers will remember this concept from code line numbers).  That won't help you sort that out in the iteration status screen unless you prepend the story name with this (i.e.,   "(120) Story title 12"  )
    But either way you do it, it would provide you with some visual representation available in the iteration status screen to know your relative priorities from the portfolio item.