GitLab Fundamentals - Hands-On Lab: Project Management with Issues and Boards

Estimated time to complete: 15 minutes

Objectives

The goal of this lab is to get an overview of the different plan features available in GitLab, including epics and issue boards.

Task A. Defining an epic

An epic is created at a group level and defines larger sets of work on a project. To create an epic:

1. Navigate to your QA group.

2. In the left sidebar, select Plan > Epics.

3. Select New epic.

4. For the title, enter My first epic.

5. Enter any description you like and select Create epic.

6. Select My first epic.

In this view, you will see details on your epic. Similar to issues, epics can contain child items and linked items, as well as activity related to the epic. In the right sidebar, there is metadata for the epic, including labs, health status, parent, and time tracking.

Task C. Defining a milestone

A milestone represents a set of work being completed over a fixed time period. A milestone can contain both epics and issues. To create a milestone:

1. Navigate to your QA group.

2. In the left sidebar, select Plan > Milestones.

3. Select New milestone.

4. In the title, enter My first milestone.

5. Enter any Start Date and Due Date you would like.

6. Input any Description, then select Create milestone.

Next, we need to assign issues to the milestone.

1. In the left sidebar, select Plan > Issues.

2. Select First issue.

3. In the right sidebar, select Edit next to Milestone.

4. Select My first milestone from the resulting dropdown.

5. Select My first milestone in the right sidebar to be redirected back to the milestone.

You will now see all issues related to the milestone, along with burndown and burnup charts for the milestone dates provided.

Task D. Issue boards

To help with viewing issues and epics in a singular place, you can utilize issue and epic boards. To start:

1. Navigate to the QA group.

2. In the left sidebar, select Plan > Issue boards.

   In this view, you will see all your issues associated with their statuses.

3. We are going to create a new list to store our issues that are associated with us. Click the New List button on the right.

4. Select Assignee, then select your username.

5. Select Add to board.

6. You should see your issue you created before in the ‘Open’ list. Click and drag the issue from the ‘Open’ list to the list with your username.

7. Click on the issue. You should see that you have been automatically assigned to the issue.

It is possible to further customize issue boards to display different sets of information depending on your requirements. For more details on issue boards, check out the documentation.

Lab Guide Complete

You have completed this lab exercise. You can view the other lab guides for this course.

Suggestions?

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

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