What does stack rank mean?

Question

What's stack rank mean for a work item in Team Foundation Server 2010? Is it a user characteristic of some kind?

Answer 1

In most cases, priority and stack rank are aligned, i.e., on average higher priority items will have lower/earlier rank... BUT

Stack Rank is not priority. It is just the 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...

so when does a lower priority item get an earlier/lower rank..

Example 1 Let's say you choose 3 bugs to fix in the current iteration. 1 is a high priority, and 2 are medium priority. But let's assume that fixing one of the medium-priority bugs means regression testing. So you would like to fix it at the earliest, so that regression effects are visible at the earliest.

Example 2 a higher priority item needs more info before you can start working on it. You will keep its priority high but will move some lower priority items to an earlier rank so that your team can continue working...

Answer 2

It assigns a priority to a requirement.

Answer 3

The priority of each requirement determined by the product owner.

http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2010/03/30/agile-project-management-for-everybody.aspx

Answer 4

Microsoft has a documentation explaining it:

Planning, Ranking, and Priorities

If want to know more about Agile Development:

MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0