GitLab Project Management - Hands-On Lab: Create And Customize Issue Boards

Estimated time to complete: 30 minutes

Objectives

To help you plan, organize, and visualize a workflow, you can utilize an issue board.

The issue board is a software project management tool used to plan, organize, and visualize a workflow for a feature or product release. You can use it as a Kanban or a Scrum board. Issue boards can be configured to meet the needs of various project management frameworks.

You can learn more in the documentation.

In this lab, you will learn how to create a simple issue board.

Task A. View and customize project-level Issue boards

1. Navigate to your Family Budget Calculator project in the Software > Core subgroup.

2. In the left pane, click Plan > Issue boards.

   The default Development board contains only 2 lists by default: issues with the Open status and issues with the Closed status. For this lab, we are going to add more lists that use issue labels.

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

4. Ensure the Label radio button is selected in the Scope section of the list configuration pane. You can also create lists that are based on other metadata.

   • Assignee: Who is directly responsible for an issue.

   • Milestone: The release/due date of issues.

   • Iteration: The velocity of issues.

5. Open the Value drop-down, and select Status::WIP.

6. Click Add to board. All issues tagged with Status::WIP should appear in the new list.

7. Add another custom list to the project board: in the top right corner, click Create list.

8. The new list will be scoped by issue label. Verify that the Label radio button is selected in the Scope section of the list configuration pane.

9. Open the Value drop-down, and select Status::Done.

10. Click Add to board.

    Your Development board should now include the custom lists Status::WIP and Status::Done along with the default lists Open and Closed.

11. Note the Create service infrastructure issue in the Open list. Use your mouse to drag the Create service infrastructure issue into the Status::WIP list.

12. Click into the Create service infrastructure issue card by clicking directly on the issue’s title. Note the Status::WIP label was automatically applied to that issue when you dragged it to a new list.

13. On the issue details page, click the Edit button next to Labels in the metadata pane.

14. Select the Status::Done label, and click away from the metadata pane to apply the label.

15. Return to Plan > Issue boards using the left pane.

    The Create service infrastructure issue should now appear in the Status::Done list.

Task B. Manage group-level issue boards

Boards can also be viewed and managed at the group level.

1. Using the breadcrumbs at the top of the page, navigate to your top level Awesome Inc group.

2. In the left sidebar, navigate to Plan > Issue boards.

   Group-level boards will have a similar default board to project-level boards. This group-level issue board shows all issues across the group’s subgroups and projects.

3. At the top of the page, click the dropdown next to Group by and select Epic. The board view should refresh and show a swimlane view of lists grouped by epic.

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and expand Issues with no epic assigned.

5. Click and drag the Identify tuning parameters to reduce performance bottlenecks issue into your Backend services epic.

6. Hover your mouse over the Backend services heading. Click the Go to epic link from the details box that appears.

7. Verify your Identify tuning parameters to reduce performance bottlenecks issue is part of the Backend services epic.

Task C. Create a new issue board

1. Navigate to Plan > Issue boards.

2. At the top of the page, click the Development dropdown to access the Switch board menu.

3. Click Create new board.

4. Title the board <YOUR NAME>

5. Deselect the checkboxes next to Show the Open list and Show the Closed list. This will remove the default lists from your custom board.

6. Click the Expand button next to Scope.

7. Click Edit next to Assignee and select yourself.

8. Click Create board.

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

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

11. Open the Value drop-down, and select Priority::High.

12. Click Add to board.

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

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

15. Open the Value drop-down, and select Status::WIP.

16. Click Add to board.

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

18. Click on the Milestone radio button in the Scope section of the list configuration pane.

19. Open the Value drop-down, and select Backend services deployed.

20. Click Add to board.

21. Refresh the browser tab that contains your new board.

Task D: Create a new issue for for your board

1. In the Priority::High list, click the (+) icon to create a new high-priority issue.

2. Title the issue Update family budget app personas

3. Select Family Budget Calculator as the project for the issue to belong to.

4. Click Create issue.

5. An issue details pane should appear on the right side of the page. Assign the issue to yourself if it is not already assigned. Add an additional Status::Open label to the issue.

6. Click the X in the top right corner to close out of the issue details pane.

7. Click the diagonal arrows in the top right of the page to enter Focus mode. The rest of the GitLab navigation UI is now hidden, allowing you to focus on issues in the board.

8. Click the diagonal arrow again to leave Focus mode.

Suggestions?

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

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