Understanding Relationships with Boards
Summary
Issue boards offer a limited view of parent-child relationships, allowing users to visualize issues as cards within columns with the optional grouping by parent epic via horizontal swimlanes. While this facilitates basic tracking and management of issues and their direct parent epics, it falls short in showcasing the comprehensive hierarchy of all work items (epics, issues and tasks). As an example, users are unable to see grandparent+ epics or child tasks on the issue board. Similarly, epic boards only display epics in a flat view without displaying relationships to parent or child epics. Additionally, we do not display decendant issues or tasks in the epic view at all limiting the visibility of project complexities and dependencies.
We plan to enhance the visibility and management capabilities of boards by introducing a feature to display the entire hierarchy of work items (epics, issues and tasks). This extension aims to provide users with a complete overview of project structures and dependencies directly from the board view, enabling more informed decision-making and efficient project management.
Potential Solutions
- Horizontal Swimlanes for Issue Grouping: Allow users to create custom horizontal swimlanes on issue boards that can display tasks associated with issues, facilitating a clearer visualization of relationships and dependencies.
- Flat List View: Consider the implementation of a flat (non-hierarchical) list that combines epics, issues, and tasks. This option needs further exploration to determine its workflow benefits and applicability.
- Nested Hierarchy in Columns: Explore the possibility of displaying the hierarchy within columns through nesting, enabling users to expand/collapse items to view the relationships and dependencies at various levels.
Ideal User Experience
The following user experience statements are meant to reflect the varied needs and contexts of different roles interacting with GitLab boards, highlighting the importance of a flexible and informative user interface.
- As a Product Manager, I need to visualize the complete hierarchy of tasks within epics on the board, so that I can easily understand and communicate the status and dependencies of work items to stakeholders.
- As a Development Team Lead, I need to track the progress of tasks associated with issues directly on the board, so that I can quickly adjust resources and priorities to meet sprint goals.
- As an Agile Coach, I need to configure views that allow for grouping and nesting of tasks in a manner that reflects our team's workflow, so that we can maintain agility and clarity in our process.
- As an Engineer, I need the ability to move tasks through their lifecycle independently from their parent issues, so that I can report on progress accurately.
- As a Project Coordinator, I need to see visual indicators of task completion and relationships on the board, so that I can effectively monitor project health and identify blockers.
User Feedback
The below summary is based on the user feedback obtained in this issue:
- Independence of Tasks: Many users desire tasks to have an independent workflow from their parent issues, allowing them to move through various phases of a board on their own lifecycle.
- Visibility and Tracking: There's a consistent request for a clearer visualization of tasks within issues on boards, and a method to track the progress of tasks more granulatively without needing to open each issue.
- Grouping and Nesting Options: Users are interested in configurable options for how tasks are grouped or nested within the board view, such as toggling between seeing tasks nested under issues or in a flat list.
- Hierarchy and Relationship Indicators: A visual indication of the hierarchy and relationship between tasks and their parent issues is important, with some users suggesting slight indentation or color coding for differentiation.
- User Interface and Experience: Users have mentioned the importance of a user-friendly and visually clear interface that doesn't overcrowd the board but still provides all necessary information at a glance.