Work tracking in a distributed team

Note

This is meant to be a visual overview of how to manage issues as part of an overall work tracking process.

As mentioned in the Using Scrumban in a distributed team post, using Sprints to plan and define the work that will be completed can be extremely helpful in a distributed team. There should be a formally established process to follow in order to help everyone understand expectations. In this scenario, we can find out how we can use GitHub issues to plan and track work which can be helpful given the recent changes the GitHub team is making to issues and projects.

Agile Project Management Terminology

What are stories, epics, and initiatives? (from atlassian.com)

• Stories, also called “user stories,” are short requirements or requests written from the perspective of an end user.
• Epics are large bodies of work that can be broken down into a number of smaller tasks (called stories).
• Initiatives are collections of epics that drive toward a common goal.

flowchart TD
    %% the preview is rendering the bottom
    %% subgraph first, so switching them here
    subgraph Initiative 2
        I2E1[Epic C]
        I2E2[Epic D]
        I2S1[Story C1]
        I2S2[Story D1]
        I2E1 --> I2S1
        I2E2 --> I2S2
    end

    subgraph Initiative 1
        I1E1[Epic A]
        I1E2[Epic B]
        I1S1[Story A1]
        I1S2[Story B1]
        I1E1 --> I1S1
        I1E2 --> I1S2
    end

    Initiative1[Initiative 1] --> I1E1
    Initiative1 --> I1E2
    Initiative2[Initiative 2] --> I2E1
    Initiative2 --> I2E2

Including Tasks to use with GitHub Projects

We can build on the Agile project management terminology by adding tasks as a subset of either a story or an epic. The differences are explained more in the Agile Story vs Task post and the Understanding Agile Work Hierarchy post.

For a deeper, evolving reference guide, see the Agile Work Hierarchy Reference page.