Separate Issue labels from Board labels
Problem to solve
When a GitLab Issue Board is being used in the context of tracking an Issue's "life cycle", it can be impossible to tell whether the current Board list's label is being used to define the Issue content, or current life cycle step.
Intended users
Any/All User Personas
Further details
Example: I have an Issue Board with Lists representing my Product's Backlog ("Open"), Sprint Backlog ("On Deck"), In-Progress ("Doing"), Testing ("Testing"), and Done ("Closed"). I create several Issues related to developer/automated testing and label them with "Testing".
Problems:
- If I simply use the one label "Testing", then it is impossible to know if any given ticket with that label has content related to developer/automated testing, or if it is simply at the testing phase of the life cycle (or both).
- I could create two separate labels like "User Testing" for content and "Automated Testing" for life cycle, but then one tool (Labels) takes on multiple semantics.
Proposal
I propose separating the semantics of Issue content and Board Lists, with Labels being used strictly for the former, and a new mechanic added for the latter.
Documentation
Documentation for Issue Boards would need to remove wording pertaining to Labels and show instead the new mechanic when creating a list.
What does success look like, and how can we measure that?
Success to the end-user would be transparent, aside from the Board Lists not appearing in the list of Labels.