What's the difference between the "Stack Rank" and "Priority" properties on work items in TFS? They seem to have the same function, except that "Stack Rank" is more flexible.
Add a comment |
3 Answers
Priority is intended to be a coarse grained property for initial grouping of features (e.g. low, medium, high), what in agile-speak is sometimes referred to as T-Shirt Sizes.
Stack Rank is an individual discrete value (unique within a release) that tells the development team the exact order by which to develop features (user stories). This practice comes from Scrum (in particular) where the Product Owner is in charge of prioritizing the team's work.
The idea behind this (stack ranking) is to force the PO to make hard decisions about the importance of each feature, and move away from "everything is equally important" kind of cop-outs.
Hope this helps.
4 Comments
pabrams
So Stack Rank is just a fine-grained priority? I thought it was more complicated than that. What is your source for this information? Microsoft does not seem to have the same definition of stack rank: learn.microsoft.com/en-ca/vsts/work/track/….
pabrams
Your answer would make more sense to me if it said "Backlog Priority" instead of "Priority", but I'd still be curious to know where you got that definition of Stack Rank.
Assaf Stone
You may note that the answer was written nearly 6 years ago. The current version of TFS was 2010. The Scrum process template, now the default, did not come out until a year or two after this answer. The Backlog Priority field was introduced with the new web interface in TFS 2012. Backlog Priority replaces Stack Rank (from the Agile for MSF template), though, not 'Priority', which remains a bucket-size field. My source information is probably retired by now, but includes the official TFS 2010 training kit, which I coauthored, MSDN articles, and the fact that I am a Premier ALM consultant at MS.
Assaf Stone
You may actually find the MSDN article that supports my answer at msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd983994%28v=vs.120%29.aspx. The current up-to-date version of this guide at learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/track/… supports my answer as well.
Stack Rank: It is just the exact order in which your team will work i.e. Rank 1 is the item on which your team will work first, Rank 2 is the second and so on.
Priority: My team is using it to denote by when something is to be done e.g. Ship Beta when all priority 1 items are done, Enter CERT when all priority 1 & 2 items are done, etc.
In most cases priority and stack rank are aligned i.e. on average higher priority items will be top ranked BUT not always.
Example 1 Let's say PM chooses 3 bugs to fix in the current iteration. 1 is a high priority and 2 are medium priority. Lets assume, fixing one of the medium priority bug means regression testing. so the PM could like to fix it early so that regression effects are visible at the earliest.
Example 2 A higher priority item needs more info before team should start working on it.. so PM would keep its priority high but will move some lower priority item to top rank so that the team can continue working.
Comments
Stack Rank - In TFS, for a Sprint in Scrum. PO sets the order during planning in which any work item type is to be developed.
Priority - In TFS, You can specify the following values:
1: Requirement cannot go without the successful resolution of the work item type, and it should be addressed immediately.
2: Requirement cannot go without the successful resolution of the work item type, but it does not need to be addressed immediately.
3: Resolution of the work item type is optional based on resources, time, and risk.
