- Deliver an intermediate version of the new features
- Wrap up milestone
- Demo new features
Deliver an intermediate version of the new features
- The feature should be merged and user visible, although simpler than the version you intend to deliver at v1.4.
Wrap up milestone
- Manage the milestone v1.2 as explained in
[Admin Appendix E: GitHub: Project Schedule Tracking] . - Wrap up the milestone using a git tag
v1.2
. When the milestone deadline is near (e.g., 0.5 days before the deadline), if you think some of the ongoing work intended for the current milestone may not finish in time, reassign them to a future milestone.
Project Schedule Tracking
In general, use the issue tracker (Milestones, Issues, PRs, Tags, Releases, and Labels) for assigning, scheduling, and tracking all noteworthy project tasks, including user stories. Update the issue tracker regularly to reflect the current status of the project. You can also use GitHub's Projects feature to manage the project, but keep it linked to the issue tracker as much as you can.
Using Issues:
During the initial stages (latest by the start of v1.2):
-
Record each of the user stories you plan to deliver as an issue in the issue tracker. e.g.
Title: As a user I can add a deadline
Description: ... so that I can keep track of my deadlines
-
Assign the
type.*
andpriority.*
labels to those issues. -
Formalize the project plan by assigning relevant issues to the corresponding milestone.
From milestone v1.2:
-
Define project tasks as issues. When you start implementing a user story (or a feature), break it down to smaller tasks if necessary. Define reasonable sized, standalone tasks. Create issues for each of those tasks so that they can be tracked.e.g.
-
A typical task should be able to done by one person, in a few hours.
- Bad (reasons: not a one-person task, not small enough):
Write the Developer Guide
- Good:
Update class diagram in the Developer Guide for v1.4
- Bad (reasons: not a one-person task, not small enough):
-
There is no need to break things into VERY small tasks. Keep them as big as possible, but they should be no bigger than what you are going to assign a single person to do within a week. eg.,
- Bad:
Implementing parser
(reason: too big). - Good:
Implementing parser support for adding of floating tasks
- Bad:
-
Do not track things taken for granted. e.g.,
push code to repo
should not be a task to track. In the example given under the previous point, it is taken for granted that the owner will also (a) test the code and (b) push to the repo when it is ready. Those two need not be tracked as separate tasks. -
Write a descriptive title for the issue. e.g.
Add support for the 'undo' command to the parser
- Omit redundant details. In some cases, the issue title is enough to describe the task. In that case, no need to repeat it in the issue description. There is no need for well-crafted and detailed descriptions for tasks. A minimal
description is enough. Similarly, labels such as
priority
can be omitted if you think they don't help you.
- Omit redundant details. In some cases, the issue title is enough to describe the task. In that case, no need to repeat it in the issue description. There is no need for well-crafted and detailed descriptions for tasks. A minimal
description is enough. Similarly, labels such as
-
-
Assign tasks (i.e., issues) to the corresponding team members using the
assignees
field. Normally, there should be some ongoing tasks and some pending tasks against each team member at any point. -
Optionally, you can use
status.ongoing
label to indicate issues currently ongoing.
Using Milestones:
We recommend you do proper milestone management starting from v1.2. Given below are the conditions to satisfy for a milestone to be considered properly managed:
Planning a Milestone:
-
Issues assigned to the milestone, team members assigned to issues: Used GitHub milestones to indicate which issues are to be handled for which milestone by assigning issues to suitable milestones. Also make sure those issues are assigned to team members. Note that you can change the milestone plan along the way as necessary.
-
Deadline set for the milestones (in the GitHub milestone). Your internal milestones can be set earlier than the deadlines we have set, to give you a buffer.
Wrapping up a Milestone:
-
A working product tagged with the correct tag (e.g.
v1.2
) and is pushed to the main repo
or a product release done on GitHub. A product release is optional for v1.2 but required from from v1.3. Click here to see an example release. -
All tests passing on Travis for the version tagged/released.
-
Milestone updated to match the product i.e. all issues completed and PRs merged for the milestone should be assigned to the milestone. Incomplete issues/PRs should be moved to a future milestone.
-
Milestone closed.
-
If necessary, future milestones are revised based on what you experienced in the current milestone e.g. if you could not finish all issues assigned to the current milestone, it is a sign that you overestimated how much you can do in a week, which means you might want to reduce the issues assigned to future milestones to match that observation.