Sort product backlog items in TFS 2012 taskboard, based on the priority

Question

Our team is moved to TFS 2012 recently, and its task board seems to be an efficient tool for scrum teams. However, product backlog items are not sorted there based on the backlog priority that we've specified for them. In other words, in the query for product backlog we have:

11. As x, I need to do *a*, so that *b* => Backlog Priority = 200
.
.
.
27. As y, I need to do *a2*, so that *b2* => Backlog Priority = 370

Which of course means that product backlog number 27 is more important than product backlog number 200. In this query, sort options are available, so that we can sort them based on their priority.

But in task board, what we get is that PBI No. 27 is shown down at the bottom of the list. I think it would be very helpful, if we could sort PBIs based on their importance in the task board, so that we could get a visual clue of more important items, and stop changing between tabs in TFS to understand something.

Is there any way that we can sort PBIs in the task board based on their importance?

Answer 1

Correct, this is stored in a different field. Many things can be used to determine order of importance to a Product Owner, priority being one of those things. As the Scrum Guide states the product owners word is the final decision.

You can certainly expose the field by customizing the WIT form, but think you'll be better off using the UI in most cases.

The MSF Agile template does expose the field used for order: Stack Rank.

Answer 2

You could attempt to use the included "Business Value" for this, since it is opaque to TFS as far as I know.

Alternatively, if you're comfortable with a change in process, you could simply change to using a descending priority scale, where priority 1 is top priority. This way, the backlog will sort itself for you.

Finally: if you like the Web Access for TFS 2012, you can also attempt to stop manually entering priorities all together, instead opting to allow TFS to set the priorities for you as you drag entries around in the backlog view as a means of reordering them. For us, this is a very pleasing and very visual (not to mention very fast) process.