Planning, Ranking, and Priorities

You use planning, ranking, and priority fields to specify which work the team should complete first. If you rank user stories, tasks, bugs, and issues, all team members gain an understanding of the relative importance of the work that they must accomplish. Ranking and priority fields are used to build several reports.

You rank and prioritize work items when you review the backlog for a product or an iteration. For more information, see Rank the Product Backlog and Iteration Backlog.

The following table indicates which data fields you can specify for each type of work item that is provided with the process template for Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for Agile Software Development v5.0.

Field Name	User Story	Task	Issue	Bug	Test Case	Shared Step
Due Date
Priority
Risk
Severity
Stack Rank
Story Points

The following table describes the fields that you can use to plan and prioritize work and that are based on MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0. For information about data types and default field attributes, see Working with Work Item Fields.

Field name	Description	Reference name	Data type	Default value of the reportable type attribute	Default value of the index attribute
Priority	A subjective rating of the bug, issue, task, or test case as it relates to the business. You can specify the following values: 1:  Product cannot ship without the successful resolution of the work item, and it should be addressed as soon as possible. 2:  Product cannot ship without the successful resolution of the work item, but it does not need to be addressed immediately. 3:  Resolution of the work item is optional based on resources, time, and risk.	Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Priority	Integer	Dimension	False
Rank	A subjective rating of the user story, task, issue, or bug compared to other work items of the same type. An item that is assigned a lower number should be fixed before an item that is assigned a higher number.	Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Rank	Double	Dimension	False
Story Points	A subjective unit of measure that captures the size of a user story. If you assign more points to a user story, you indicate that more work is required to implement it.	Microsoft.VSTS. Scheduling.StoryPoints	Double	Dimension	True
Risk	A subjective rating of the relative uncertainty around the successful completion of the user story. You can specify the following values: 1 - High 2 - Medium 3 - Low	Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Risk	String	Dimension	False
Severity	A subjective rating of the impact of a bug on the project. You can specify the following values: 1 - Critical 2 - High 3 - Medium 4 - Low	Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Severity	String	Dimension	False
Due Date	The forecasted date for an issue to be completed. This field is applicable only to issue work items.	Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.DueDate	DateTime	Dimension	False

See Also

Concepts

Using System Fields and Fields Defined by the MSF Process Templates

Finding Bugs, Tasks, and Other Work Items

Query Fields, Operators, Values, and Variables

Other Resources

Work Items and Workflow (Agile)

Work Item Fields (Agile)