GitHub Projects - Do you know how to do Scrum?

GitHub is an awesome place to manage your code, but initially it wasn't the easiest place to manage Scrum. Things improved in 2021 with GitHub Projects.

GitHub Projects lets you create Sprints and manage Issues (aka PBIs or Tasks) with far more power.

Video: Building your backlog with Projects (3 min)

Let's take a look at some of the great new things you can do...

Track Sprints
Track estimates
Add custom fields to Issues
Collate Issues from multiple Repos

githubscrumworkflowimproved — Figure: Good example - GitHub Projects gives you much more powerful project management ability

Setting up

That's a tonne of awesome features....but it requires a bit of set up, follow these steps to get up and running:

Navigate to Projects | Projects | New project

Figure: Create a new GitHub Project
Now we have the option to create a project from a template or from blank. Here is a great template [Template] GitHub Scrum

Figure: Choose template to create a new project
We now want to setup our Sprint iteration. Navigate to Project Settings | Sprint | + Add Iteration

Figure: Creating Sprint irterations in a new GitHub project
You will see your new Sprint created with settings. Click on the field you wish to edit to modify - name it Sprint ‘X’ and enter Start on date and Duration.

Figure: Pick the name and the dates via the Iteration field options
We can now navigate through the project via the view bar. This will provide us the different dashboards for seperate elements of our projects.

Figure: SSW.Website view bar
To modify a new view, select the down arrow next to the view name. This will allow you to customize views to your desired purpose.

Note: To see the Sprints grouped, and the issues ordered by status, click the view drop down and select group:Sprint and sort:Status-asc

Figure: Editing a view
Voila! You have Scrum all setup! For bonus points check out the insights screen where we can gather specific data about our teams work.

Figure: Finding the Insights Screen

Figure: Example custom chart displaying workload for the current Sprint