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?
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.