Move from Azure Boards to GitHub Projects (beta) ?
New GitHub Projects (beta) view
GitHub announced new Projects Beta, that is new version of the “old” GitHub Projects. Projects Beta (later PB) aims to solve the issue that Microsoft is currently having with GitHub and that is the lack of project management tools. Sadly this tool is not the complete solution, but it sure has some interesting features.
Microsoft DevOps as described in DevOps Dojo:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/devops-dojo-people-teams/
This picture is the best way to describe what is currently going on in the Microsofts DevOps stack. GitHub is used in almost every action except planning, where lies the Azure DevOps Boards. DevOps Boards is the only option currently in Microsoft stack to manage product development and planning currently, and so it will remain even after the launch of GitHub PB. First let’s see what are the killer features in PB and the let’s deep dive more into problems that it still has.
The Good Parts
First I have to say that the GitHub PB is fast. It is blazing fast and does not have any performance hickups. I think that the main killer feature currently is the grouping feature. PB users can group the tickets by any field and the PB will break tickets into groups that can be prioritized separately. This is very good for example when work needs to split into milestones, or when the work is split between multiple teams. Just group the tickets by milestone, or team and you are good to go.
PB is also quite customizable, at least what comes to issues. You can easily add and edit fields and add colors and icons for different purposes. These all brings nice clarity, when large amount of issues are viewed at the same time. I also like the ability to create views for different purposes. Creating own views for teams is a good approach to hide unnecessary tickets from another team.
One last thing that needs to be said is, that you can add issues from multiple repos into one project.
The Bad Parts
Life is not perfect and so is PB. There are two main issues that I’m currently having with it and the first is lack of workload. There is no support for any kind of workload calculations. You could add own field for workload, but that is just a number without any support from system. You won’t get any velocity number, sprint workload details, milestone forecasting or anything out of PB. The another problem is that GitHub issues does not support any relations. You can’t create features or epics and monitor their progress through GitHub itself. Of course you can use milestones for that, but again there is no support for workloads, so the milestones just tells you how many issues are open vs. closed. Locking milestones to epics also means that they cannot be used for anything else, because the milestones supports only one kind of view (for example if milestones are created per epics, you cannot create them for deployments…).
The lack of workload and lack of relations (or issue types) are blockers that prevents the main use of PB as only project management tool and using it as side, does not feel right yet. The benefits does not cover the usage and synchronization costs.
Summary
The GitHub Projects Beta is a good start on the road to a project management tool, but it still has a lot to catch up. I suggest everyone to wait for few product updates (maybe till the beta is over) and then give it a try. I think the GitHub Projects Beta is the correct way for Microsoft to move on with their DevOps stack and hopefully this project will be a success, but currently it is too beta for production usage.