GitLab Agile Portfolio Management - Hands-On Lab: Use GitLab Planning Tools

Estimated time to complete: 45-60 minutes

Objectives

To help you organize your work, GitLab provides epics, iterations, and milestones. In this lab, you will learn how to create, configure, and manage epics, iterations, and milestones in your projects.

Task A. Review planning features in GitLab

1. In a new browser tab, navigate to the GitLab project source code at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab. Note the namespace structure indicated by the top of the page. You should be in the GitLab project inside the GitLab.org group.

2. At the top of the page above the project name, click GitLab.org to navigate to the parent group.

3. Note the number of epics, issues, and merge requests indicated in the left pane. These numbers represent work items across all subgroups and projects inside Gitlab.org.

4. In the left pane, click Epics. This takes you to a searchable list of epics in GitLab.org and all its subgroups.

5. In the left pane, click Plan > Roadmap. Epics and milestones in a group containing a start date or due date can be visualized in a form of a timeline (that is, a Gantt chart). The Roadmap page shows the epics and milestones in a group, one of its subgroups, or a project in one of the groups.

6. On the epic bars, you can see each epic’s title, progress, and completed weight percentage. When you hover over an epic bar, a popover appears with the epic’s title, start date, due date, and weight completed.

7. You can expand epics that contain child epics to show their child epics in the roadmap. You can select the chevron (v) next to the epic title to expand and collapse the child epics.

Task B. Create an epic

Epics provide a way to organize and manage a set of issues and sub-epics that share a strategic theme. In addition to logical grouping, epics enable project managers to perform higher level planning and build a roadmap with visual status tracking. You can read more about epics in the documentation.

1. In the lab environment browser tab, at the top of the page, click the ... beside GitLab Learn Labs.

2. Click on My Test Group.

3. On the groups page, click on the Awesome Inc subgroup. Inside the subgroup, click Software.

4. In the left pane of the Software group landing page, click Epics.

5. In the upper-right corner above the search bar, click on the New epic button.

6. On the New Epic page, enter Feature Category: Retirement Planning in the Title (required) field. Having a descriptive title helps make it clear what issues and sub-epics should be associated with the epic.

7. In the Description field, paste the following:

   # Overview
   
   This is the top-level epic for all features in the `Retirement Planning` category of Awesome Co.'s personal finance software.
   
   # Useful Links
   - *To-Do: add link to the feature strategy document*
   - *To-Do: add contributing team member information*
   

   There is no need to change any other options for the epic, but it is still important to understand the options.

8. There are additional options that you can configure or leave at their default setting.

   • Confidentiality: Create private epics for internal use if you have a public facing project.

   • Label: Apply labels to your epic, which are metadata tags that can be used to sort and filter your epics.

   • Start Date and Due Date: Schedule your epics around project milestones.

   • Color: Customize the display color of the epic when used in roadmap timeline bars. Look at the GitLab.org group’s Roadmap in Task A for an example.

Task C: Create a child epic

A parent epic can have multiple child epics. Use child epics to organize more complex topics into smaller, more focused epics and issues.

1. You will now create a new child epic to link to the parent epic. Navigate to your Epics page by clicking on Plan > Epics on the left pane.

2. Click the New epic button in the top right corner.

3. In the title section, type in Investment Tracking.

4. In the Description field, paste the following:

   # Overview
   
   This epic tracks all work on `Investment Tracking` features and integrations, as part of the overall `Retirement Planning` category strategy.
   

5. Leave all other fields as they are, and click Create epic.

6. Return to the Software group’s full list of epics by clicking Epics in the breadcrumbs at the top of the page.

7. Click into the Feature Category: Retirement Planning epic.

8. You will now designate the Investment Tracking epic as a child of the Retirement Planning epic. In the Child issues and epics tab, select the Add drop-down menu, and click Add an existing epic.

   You can also use this menu to create a child epic from scratch.

9. Type & in the field provided, and select Investment Tracking from the list of epics.

   The & symbol lets you refer to epics by their unique epic ID rather than their name. This is useful for when you have a large number of epics with similar names.

10. Click Add to link Investment Tracking as a child epic to the Retirement Planning parent epic.

Task D. Set milestones to represent product goals

Milestones in GitLab are a way to track issues and merge requests created to achieve a broader goal in a certain period of time. Milestones allow you to organize epics, issues and merge requests into a cohesive group, with an optional start date and an optional due date. You can read more about milestones in the documentation.

1. Navigate to the Awesome Inc subgroup.

2. In the left pane, click Plan > Milestones. This will take you to the Milestones page.

3. Click New milestone in the top right corner.

4. In the Title section, type in Organization Kickoff.

5. In the Start Date section, use the calendar to enter in today’s date.

6. In the End Date section, use the calender to enter 2 days from today’s date as the milestone end date.

   While a description is not necessary, it is recommended to type in a description to help clarify what the milestone is intended to be used for.

7. Click Create milestone.

8. In the breadcrumbs at the top of the page, click Milestones.

9. Click New milestone to create a second milestone.

10. In the Title section, type in Backend services deployed.

11. In the Start Date section, use the calendar to enter in today’s date.

12. In the End Date section, use the calender to enter 2 weeks from today as the milestone end date.

13. Click Create milestone.

14. In the breadcrumbs at the top of the page, click Milestones to view your newly created milestones.

You will later assign tasks to the epics and milestones you created, allowing you to use roadmaps to view the progress of your initiatives.

Task E. Schedule iterations as team sprints

Iterations are mutually exclusive timeboxes intended to track team velocity, while milestones can represent larger, overlapping product goals. You can read more about iterations in the documentation.

1. In your subgroup structure, navigate to Awesome Inc > Software.

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

3. Click New iteration cadence in the top right corner.

4. In the Title section, type in Team sprints .

5. In the Description section, type in Tracking team progress toward minimum viable product .

6. In the Automatic start date input, use the calendar to enter in today’s date.

7. In the Duration section, select 2 weeks as the duration of each iteration.

8. In the Upcoming iterations section, select 6 for the number of upcoming iterations.

9. Ensure the Enable roll over checkbox is selected.

   At the end of the current iteration, all open issues are added to the next iteration when Enable roll over is selected.

10. Select Create cadence.

You will later assign individual tasks to iterations (sprints).

Task F. Create a wiki for project documentation

If you don’t want to keep your documentation in your repository, but you want to keep it in the same project as your code, you can use the wiki GitLab provides in each GitLab project. Every wiki is a separate Git repository, so you can create wiki pages in the web interface, or locally using Git. GitLab wikis support Markdown, Rdoc, AsciiDoc, and Org for content. Wiki pages written in Markdown support all Markdown features, and also provide some wiki-specific behavior for links. You can read more about wikis here.

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

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

3. Click Create your first page button in the middle of the page.

4. In the Title section, type in Family Budget Calculator Documentation as the page title.

5. Paste the following text in the content field underneath the title field.

   ## Summary
   
   The Family Budget Calculator helps households stay on budget and save for the future.
   
   ## Contact
   
   Contact <YOUR-NAME> with questions or comments.
   

6. Click Create Page. You should see a new Wiki page with the content you created.

If you’d like, edit the Family Budget Calculator Documentation page to add additional content or create additional wiki pages.

Suggestions?

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

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