Key Points

Introduction


  • Issue tracking is the process of monitoring problems and requests for a software product.
  • Issue tracking enables a software development team to capture, organize, and manage work collaboratively.

Basic Issue Tracking


  • A good issue has a clear title, steps to reproduce, expected vs. actual behavior, and covers one problem.
  • New issues can be opened in a repository using the ‘New issue’ button.
  • Text on issues use Markdown styling for formatting.
  • A user can interact with issues in multiple ways: commenting, mentioning others, linking to other issues and pull requests, and more.
  • GenAI can format messy notes into a structured report, but you must supply and verify the facts.

Labelling Issues


  • Labelling issues can help with organization and filtering.
  • Curate the default label set to fit your project and team size.
  • Filtering (including exclusion, e.g. -label:bug) makes a big backlog manageable.

Issue Templates


  • Templates can be incorporated into any GitHub repository and can make issue creation more structured.
  • A good template incorporates the “good issue” table into every new report.
  • External links can be listed with the templates to help direct users to external resources.
  • GenAI can draft a template quickly — review and trim it to fit your project.