Agile Ranking

Owned by Robert Alexander Marshall
Last updated: Oct 22, 2021
4 min read

Overview

If you are ranking your issues, in your JIRA project sidebar select 

  • Agile Ranking

If you are planning your issues, select the Agile Backlog option.

Agile Ranking Screen

The Agile Ranking screen is the place where the process of ranking starts.

The (Chief) Product owner, product manager or any other managerial role starts by selecting the issue type.

Next, you will arrange the issues based on their business value (i.e., importance) and opportunity/delay cost (urgency). Your own rankings will heavily depend on the issue type and the industry of your organization.

For example, the cost of delaying a security bug significantly impacts your brand trustworthiness if you are a bank, but delaying a new UX improvement will barely be noticed.

User's Guide

Related Pages

Agile Ranking Screen

The Agile Ranking screen layout is divided into three parts



Header Toolbar

In the left part of the Agile Ranking header toolbar you'll see

  • the currently selected agile board filter (e.g., Scrum: Teams in Space)
  • and the number of issues rendered

In the right part of the header toolbar you'll find the issue types, with one always selected, and the share button, which generates a sharable link of the current board. 


Unranked Issues

The list of unranked issues displays those issues that are

  • not in a sprint (i.e. are not planned yet)
  • not ranked (i.e. are not in the ranking matrix yet)



You can customize your experience and simplify your ranking session using the grouping ability.

  • choose a field in the group selector to group your issues by project, versions, epics, assignees, etc.

To work with the most pressing issues, sort your list of unranked issues by updated, rank, etc.

  • you'll find the sorting options at the bottom of the Unranked Issues box

Finally, you can filter the set of unranked issues using the search box.

  • the issues are filtered as you type, generating results based on either the title or the key of the issue



Ranking Matrix

The ranking matrix consists of 36 numbered cells with #1 representing the most urgent and important one, and #36 the least urgent and important.


Ideally you will place only one issue per box. The matrix will allow you to temporarily place a maximum of two issues per cell, however, it will mark the box red as a warning indicating of a potential conflict.

We do not recommend planning those issues into Sprints until this situation is fixed and you have found a separate cell for every issue. 

The different issue types usually are better understood by different teams. Check Welcome to Comala Agile Ranking if you haven't read it yet.

Did you know...?

You can

  • drag and drop issues from one group to another to update the issues? Move an issue to another component, or change the priority just by dragging it to another group
  • drag and drop issues within a group to rank to a higher or lower position?
  • drag and drop groups to change the order? Change the order of the groups if you prefer a different order for your versions, priorities or any other field

You can

  • mouse-over the colored edge to see the complete epic name
  • click in the issue to see a preview of the issue with all its details

Pro tips

Don't try to rank all your issues at once

  • move to the matrix only those issues that are well defined, agreed and understood by all the stakeholders

You can start moving issues from the lower positions all the way to the top positions, deferring those issues that are not yet as important as the rest

When you change the rank of an issue

  • you are also changing the JIRA ranking (more information about JIRA ranking), so the visibility of that ranking is visible for the whole organization