Ranking in Jira

I’ll just start out by saying that I’m no Jira expert, in fact I don’t even have Jira admin privileges at my current project. I do however use Jira at least once a day. I manage versions, and create components. I also create stories and epics, and try to maintain sprint and product backlogs in Jira. My project also uses Greenhopper.

My problem today? Greenhopper stopped ranking my stories! Or rather started randomly ranking my stories! In the Greenhopper planning board view, every time I edited a story or epic and saved my changes, my backlog would get re-ordered. It didn’t take long before my whole backlog was scrambled, the more I tried to fix the ordering the worse it got.

If this happens to you, do not try to fix the ordering! Stop making changes, and… “Optimize(repair)”  your ranking field!? Yeah, that’s right, you need to fix the ranking field every once in a while. You’ll find this “great” feature under Tools -> Configuration, under General find the Ranking Field section. Here you’ll find the Optimize(repair)link, just click and wait… and wait… and wait… and then your ranking problems will be solved.

Unfortunately, you’ll still have to come into the office tomorrow and somehow get your product backlog back in the right order, because it’s still scrambled.

No solution is perfect, but sometimes it feels like Greenhopper is a just way too far from perfect.

nb the version of Jira we’re using is v4.0.2#472 and Greenhopper v4.3

Get in touch via my homepage if you have questions or comments!

6 responses on “Ranking in Jira

  1. We’ve seen the same problem.  Even worse, we just recently upgraded Jira and Greenhopper which resulted in all of the rankings being scrambled. The "optimize" link didn’t fix anything.

    Just curious, what version of Jira and Greenhopper are you using?

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