Do you know to set up GitHub Scrum workflow?

Last updated by Tiago Araújo [SSW] about 1 year ago.See history

GitHub issues (classic) offers a great way to have an agile development process following a kanban process. Unfortunately it requires a bit of effort (or a 3rd party tool) to set it up for good Scrum.

Note: Based on GitHub Scrum workflow.

How it works

  • Product Backlog Items (PBIs) are reported as issues
  • Points and metadata are assigned to PBIs as labels
  • milestones are used to group issues in Sprints

1. Create issues as Product Backlog Items

To create a new backlog item, it is best practice to configure GitHub issue templates for your repository. See Configuring issue templates for your repository

Make sure you assign suitable labels to the issue. Later on during the Sprint Forecast meeting, the issue should be prioritized and added to a Sprint (milestone) if appropriate.

Issues allow you to have a conversation about the item and even allow you to create task lists inside the issue using GitHub's markdown.

2. Add labels to issues

Add the following labels to your repository:

Estimates

estimate labels allow you to set estimates in your backlog. E.g.:

Label Time Estimate
estimate: 1 2 hour
estimate: 2 4 hours
estimate: 4 1 day
estimate: 8 2 days
estimate: 16 4 days
estimate: 32 2 weeks
estimate: 64 1 month

Your actual estimates should align with the rule Estimating - Do you know how to size Product Backlog Items (PBIs) effectively?

Types

type labels allow you to easily filter PBIs in the dashboard. E.g.:

Label Type
type:bug bug
type:chore chore, maintenance work
type:feature new feature
type:infrastructure infrastructure related
type:performance performance related
type:refactor refactor
type:test test related

Others

You can define and assign custom labels that you need within your workflow or organization.

3. Define Sprints as milestones

You can create a milestone for every Sprint and add Product PBIs from the backlog to a milestone.

This process allows you to group PBIs in Sprints and track them by milestone in your issue dashboard (github.com/issues when logged in).

The backlog then consists of all PBIs that have no milestone attached to them.

Tip: Use no:milestone in the search field on your issue dashboard to find PBIs.

See Rules to Awesome Documentation to follow best practices on setting up a projects README.

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