What criteria is used to determine the <,>,<=,>= values for drop down lists of defect Severity or Priority in a filter or query?

Products

• Rally SaaS
• Rally On-Premise

Issue/Introduction

What criteria is used when filtering or querying on Defect Severity or Priority?

Resolution

One would assume that given the priority choices of: Resolve Immediately, High Attention, Normal, Low; that a less than (<) operator in a filter would know that Low is less than High Attention.  However the results of such a query may be misleading.

The ranking of these 'values' is determined by the order in which they appear in the dropdown list or how they are configured in the workspace. The following screen shot depicts and example configuration of priority values in a drop down list;

 

However when a filter is applied to defects where 'Priority < Normal' the following is the result;

 

This is quite the opposite result of what one may desire.

The reason for this is the operations are based on the order in which the values are listed in the configuration.  In this example Low is at the bottom of the list and therefore is considered to be the highest or greatest value.  Based on the query above the values that are less than Normal are the values above it in the list, namely Resolve Immediately and High Attention. 

In order to use what are typically numeric operators in a query or filter for alpha characters it is the order they are displayed or configured that determines their 'weight' or 'greatness'.  The top of the list is the lesser of the values.