Prioritizing and filtering backlog based on number of duplicates

[Jordan Lampe]

We're exploring new ways for our team to submit bugs and feature requests. We're requesting Jira users (e.g. account management) to submit a Jira ticket for each request. We understand there will be duplicates. In fact, for a variety of reasons, we want the additional context duplication can offer us. We'd like this duplicity to help drive prioritization (i.e. "Customers X, Y, and Z have requested this Feature 123! We should move this up in the backlog accordingly.").

Assuming I tag the issues manually as "duplicates" in the Linked Issue field, my idea was to create a filter that would tag the original as issue "is duplicated by" and then apply "duplicates" to any follow-on issue. I would then create a filter that eliminated the "duplicates".

None of my JQL queries are working (new to JQL/SQL) and most forum postings assume I'm trying to find and close duplicates when the original issue is completed. #nohelp

Questions:

a) Better idea here than using duplicates to drive backlog prioritization by multiple stakeholders? (NOTE: See item below about "voting". It won't work as is.)

b) Which JQL query is right for this filter?

NOTE: Unfortunately, using the voting functionality won't work, because it's limited to one vote per Jira user (e.g. account manager) and he/she may have multiple customers requesting the feature. 

[Rachel Wright]

Hi @Jordan Lampe, I think you're on the right path! 

How about after you tag an issue as a dupe (using the "linked issues" feature) , you also close it with a Resolution of "Duplicate"?  That way you can simply exclude the issues that are closed (or resolved as a dupe) from your filter.

I DO think there's value in showing just how many requests arrived, even if they are dupes.  For example, at the end of the year, I report on how many dupes, invalid requests, and "works as designed" reports the Jira Support team got!  It's always enlightening data.  ;)  

And later, if you want to count just how many dupes there were for a single issue, your JQL would be in the format:  

issue in linkedIssues(PROJECT-123)

OR

issue in linkedIssues(PROJECT-123, "is duplicated by")

Hope this helps!

Rachel Wright
Author, Jira Strategy Admin Workbook

[Jordan Lampe]

Going to give this a go. Thanks @Rachel Wright!

[mararn1618 _secretbakery_io_]

Hey @Jordan Lampe

this is a very interesting thought. I'm actually working on some things regarding duplicates (a chrome plugin to prevent duplicate creation; link) and want to take what I've learned to more scenarios.

One thought I had was taking the plugins logic to (1) "identify duplicate" into a JIRA app and (2) find duplicates for newly created issues (e.g. via email) to then (3) take action and clean up the duplicate.

For you step number (3) could be to merge the newly created issue into an existing one, thus keep the additional context + giving the original user story "more weight" / priority (we'd need to figure this out).

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What are your thoughts on that? What's the current status with your prioritization experiment?- Cheers