Comala Agile Ranking’s latest release opens up new possibilities for the app, as users can now choose to rank their issues from three separate perspectives. To go along with our existing “Importance” ranking matrix, we’ve now introduced two new options: “Risk” and “Priority.”
If you are not familiar with the “Importance matrix,” it’s our Jira board that allows you to rank your issues based on their necessity to the project (importance) and their sensitivity to time (urgency). Of course, this importance depends heavily on what your business values – not every company puts the same importance and urgency on the same issues.
Once you have ranked your issues, the team moves to the Agile Backlog for sprint planning (or backlog refinement), except now you’re planning with the advantage of having everything already discussed and in the proper order!
New perspectives
These two metrics, urgency and importance are critical in Agile planning. But those are not the only dimensions that matter; different stakeholders demand different perspectives. Here is where the new perspectives will augment Agile Ranking’s capability and make planning even easier.
The first of the new perspectives are “Priority,” which helps better manage complex projects. With its two axes, “Value” and “Effort,” you are able to quickly evaluate your issues to find those with the best ratio of value to effort. This is common practice for any team involved with Project Management, and it should enable teams to tackle the issues that provide the most amount of value for the least amount of effort, increasing their efficiency.
Once again, the final placement of the issues will rely on your own definition of value (e.g., how many customers are requesting it or what’s the gross revenue) and effort (e.g., time, resources, etc.). In our particular case, we find this a fundamental perspective when we plan our new epics.
Meanwhile, the second new perspective will help you determine if those important issues are worthwhile proceeding with. The “Risk” perspective features two axes: a horizontal one for “Severity” and a vertical “Probability” axis. Use this perspective to assess the riskiness of your issues and to plan your actions accordingly, i.e., is there any almost certain risk with catastrophic consequences? If so, it becomes obvious – do it now.
Next, apply your preferred perspective to your backlog during the sprint planning in the Agile Backlog.
Finally, this enhancement adds one last benefit to your Agile planning. When viewing any perspectives on the Agile Ranking screen, you can choose to sort your unranked issues by either of the other two perspectives. For example, if you’re currently ranking issues along the “Importance” matrix, you can choose to sort your unranked issues by either “Risk” or “Priority”, instantly arranging those issues in the order inherited from the other perspective. Our own team has found it very useful to sort the unranked list of issues using the priority perspective as a means of comparison when ranking epics in the “Importance” matrix.
Last updated: 2023-03-21
Appfire
Appfire is an enterprise collaboration software company that enables teams to plan and deliver their best work. Since launching in 2005 as one of the original Atlassian ecosystem partners, Appfire has built a portfolio of top-selling apps for more than 30,000 customers — including 55% of Fortune 500 companies. As a product-led company, Appfire identifies gaps in industries serving developers and client support teams and then builds solutions that drive productivity and efficiency.
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