GitLab Project Management - Hands-On Lab: Create And Manage A Waterfall Board

Estimated time to complete: 30 minutes

Objectives

The Kanban and Scrum boards in previous labs showed the progress of issues as developers worked on them. A waterfall board shows the health of all the issues that your team is responsible for within in a single waterfall stage. With a pure waterfall workflow, all issues are due at the same time–at the end of the waterfall stage–so what you’re tracking with the board is how likely they are to be done by that date.

Task A. Make a milestone representing a waterfall stage

1. Navigate to the Awesome Software project.

2. In the left pane, click Plan > Milestones.

3. Click New milestone.

4. Type Release 2.0-Dev in the Title field.

5. Select today’s date as the Start Date by clicking on today’s date in the calendar.

6. Select 1 month from today’s date as the Due Date by clicking on today’s date in the calendar.

7. Write up a clear description for the milestone.

8. Click Create milestone.

Task B. Add issues to the milestone

1. In the left pane, click Issues.

2. Click Bulk Edit.

3. Select a few issues of your choice by clicking the faint checkbox to the left of the search bar above the list of issues.

4. In the right pane, select Release 2.0-Dev from the Milestone dropdown.

5. At the top of the right pane, click Update all to apply the label to all selected issues.

Task C. Simulate past work in the waterfall stage by setting issue health statuses

1. For each issue in the milestone, choose one of the scoped labels to apply: Health::On Track, Health::Needs Attention, or Health::At Risk.

Remember, to apply a label to an issue, click on the issue. Then, on the right side of the screen next to the Labels keyword, click on Edit. From there, apply one of the labels by clicking on the label name, and then clicking off to set it.

Task D. Make a board to track the health of issues in a single waterfall stage

1. In the left pane, click Plan > Issue Boards.

2. Using the dropdown at the top of the page, create a new board.

3. Title the board Release 2.0 Dev Stage

4. Deselect the Show the open list checkbox.

5. Leave the Show the Closed list checkbox selected.

6. Scope the board to display issues in the Release 2.0-Dev milestone.

7. Click Create board.

   We will now create three new lists for the board: a list with a Health::On Track label, a list with a Health::Needs Attention label, and a list with a Health::At Risk label.

8. In the top right corner, click Create list.

9. Check that the Label radio button is selected in the Scope section of the list configuration pane.

10. Open the Value drop-down, and select Health::On Track.

11. Click Add to board.

12. In the top right corner, click Create list.

13. Check that the Label radio button is selected in the Scope section of the list configuration pane.

14. Open the Value drop-down, and select Health::Needs Attention.

15. Click Add to board.

16. In the top right corner, click Create list.

17. Check that the Label radio button is selected in the Scope section of the list configuration pane.

18. Open the Value drop-down, and select Health::At Risk.

19. Click Add to board.

At this point, you have a complete board set up, but it is still recommended that you practice using this board as you would in production. For example, practice dragging and dropping your issues across different lists as their at-risk status increases or decreases. Or, simulate completing some issues by dragging them into the Closed list. Make sure to click on the issues themselves to confirm they are closed.

Suggestions?

If you’d like to suggest changes, please submit them via merge request.

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