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So we recently upgraded to TFS 2013 Update 3 from TFS 2010 SP1 and my product owners do NOT like it at all. This is because of the sparcification logic that was added (I think in Update 2). Now their backlog priorities are all messed up and they have this huge number in the billions as a priority.

To compound this, there are multiple product owners, so if product owner A prioritizes something and then product owner B prioritizes something, the backlog items get re-ordered and chaos ensues.

I was thinking maybe the answer is to use the Features work item and then a po could just map work items they care about in the order they want, but I'm not convinced this is the right answer.

I want to do well by my user base (POs, devs, etc.), but I do not know a best practice solution for this. What would you guys recommend?

Steve L.
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  • asking the same question on a site where it will not be off topic? This is completely opinion based, and that is off topic for SO. Have you tried another stack exchange site? – jbutler483 Aug 27 '14 at 14:18
  • I don't think I have asked this before. I've seen other best practices questions on here. – Steve L. Aug 27 '14 at 14:25
  • There is something wrong in your process: you cannot have two PO on the same backlog. – Giulio Vian Aug 27 '14 at 17:29
  • Understood, but even if there were only one PO, we'd still be affected by the automatic re-prioritization. I'm just trying to figure out which field should be used instead of backlog priority. – Steve L. Aug 27 '14 at 19:20
  • What exactly would you expect to happen if two people prioritize the same list of items in two different ways? Try using tags and have them tag what they want to see and then filter the backlog. Don't manually change the backlog priority field, just sort by it. – Andrew Clear Aug 28 '14 at 01:22
  • If I set a priority on a work item and someone else sets a priority on a different one, I'd expect the entry we made to be respected and not overwritten. That's the way it was before we upgraded. Don't get me wrong, I love me some TFS, but this has proven to be a little bit of hurdle. In any case, I'm meeting with that team tomorrow. Hoping to get a better feel for how they work and offer suggestions like "stop doing that". ;) As you said, tagging might be the way to go and/or maybe a custom field. I'd just hide the ootb backlog priority field from the work item form so they can't change it. – Steve L. Aug 28 '14 at 05:04

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After meeting with the POs, this is the solution that I have come up with. I'm going to remove the backlog priority field from the work item form (this is coming in a future update anyway). Then I'm going to add a new custom field to represent a priority which is meaningful to us. Tagging will be used in scenarios where a PO may want to call out something specific about the work item.

Steve L.
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