Exploratory interviews regarding project management / issues

Related Issues

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/27728

Recommendations

Whilst the main aim of the interviews was to explore how users manage issues boards, the following points were discussed and raised by users:

• Ability to manage multiple projects on one issues board. (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/928, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/1295.)

• Ability to add tasks easily with little detail. (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/28539, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/27829)

• An issues board which has the simplicity of a physical board and allows them to see at a glance what issues are being worked on. (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/28542)

• An issues board which has swimlanes. (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/28536)

• An issues board which shows interdependencies / relationships between issues (such as parent/child, subject/story, etc). (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/21453)

• When viewing a digital project board, a developer only wants to view issues which are assigned to their self. (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/28537)

• Ability to auto-assign specific fields as an issue is created, especially if the issue is raised through a third party ticketing system. Accompanied by the ability to search/query these custom fields. (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/8988 , https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/28554)

• Ability to automatically import issues into GitLab from third party tools. (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/12631, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/23530, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/23929)

• To know how long an issue has remained in a column without moving / tracking the time taken for each workflow transition '(semi-related to: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/28448. Might be covered by Chris Peressini's pending issue for combining board stages into cycle analytics)

Audio

• User 1: http://bit.ly/2m7DyFj
• User 2: http://bit.ly/2lBIx3l
• User 3: http://bit.ly/2lq49xB (Restrictive access, user does not wish to share the audio publicly)
• User 4: http://bit.ly/2ljdMQi (Restrictive access, user does not wish to share the audio publicly)
• User 5: http://bit.ly/2kVzK8E

User Bios

User 1

• Team Leader - manages 3 developers, contributes to code and is part Product Manager.

• Small software company, 10 employees.

• GitLab CE User (for code hosting, code review and CI only)

User 2

• Consultant, works for a company which helps customers get a product from code to production.

• Current customer uses JIRA alongside a physical board, utilised by 5 people (3 developers from his company and 2 people, including a Product Manager, from the customer's company).

• Previous experience with GitLab EE.

User 3

• Lead Java Developer at a finance company.

• Using Redmine

• Using GitLab CE (for code hosting only, planning to extend to CI and code review)

User 4

• PHP Developer

• Using JIRA alongside a physical board

• Using GitLab CE (for code hosting, merge requests and CI)

User 5

• Developer, part Sysadmin and part Product Manager at a software company.

• Using Kanbanize. Has previous experience of JIRA.

• Using GitLab CE (for code hosting, merge requests and CI)