TFS 2012 Backlog prioritisation

Question

I'm new to TFS 2012, and I was wondering if anyone could help, on probably a silly question but:

How is the Backlog Priority determined in TFS out of the box? I can see I can change the priority by dragging and dropping, and the values constantly change, but I am not sure how or why they change in the way they do. I would like the Business Value and Effort field values to drive the backlog priority, but these seem totally unlinked. Is there a way I can get these field values to drive the backlog priority?

Answer 1

The product backlog is backed by a dynamically created query that filters on state, work item type and the area path. The order of the work items is by "Order field".

Which field is used as the "Order field", that is stored in the common configuration. If you are on premise, you can change the field being used: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tfs/hh739073(v=vs.110).aspx.

Answer 2

Another option would be to simply create your own query that sorts by the Business Value and Effort fields:

1. Select the type of query
2. Specify top-level query filter criteria remove, group, or ungroup query clauses
3. Choose Column Options Column Options to add or remove fields.
4. Choose the Sorting tab to choose the order of fields to use to sort the results.
5. Run a query and check Results
6. Adjust your query filter criteria