Use a Project as an alternative to Milestones

[DNin01]

Calling all @ScratchAddons/admins

It seems like recently there has been a little more interest regarding the Projects feature within the ScratchAddons organization, based on what's been going on over at the Projects tab (I'm not going to get into detail or count them because some of them are private), so I was wondering if you all felt like creating a new Project to collect to-dos for releases instead of just using Milestones.

Advantages

• Customizable layout
• Customizable fields (that we can create for things like status, due date, and version)
• Can include issues and PRs from other repositories, such as website-v2
• Talking planning and triaging, not much has to change and it doesn't have to be super complex, which should help us not burn out maintaining it

Disadvantages

• Potentially slower access
• Some information may not be available
• Certain automations in the Project might be difficult

I like organizing, and one of my favorite parts is getting creative with it. I have tried out Projects before, so if anyone wants, I can make one if you want, and you can tell me what you think, but first, I think we should discuss it a bit so we can all agree on a layout and setup.

[Hans5958]

so I was wondering if you all felt like moving away from Milestones into a new Project to collect to-dos for releases.

There are some that have been discussed on Discord (generally it is invoked because I wanted to create two projects for website and docs to let people know what is up), but the main point regarding this one is that "Milestones has its own purpose and should be kept."

Generally milestones is something that has an end, like a version has a time for a release. A project is a task board to track the progress of the overall project, not just a general milestone. Both of these have it's own purpose and can work in tandem. There is no need to one to be "being replaced" or anything.

[DNin01]

Generally milestones is something that has an end, like a version has a time for a release. A project is a task board to track the progress of the overall project, not just a general milestone.

Iteration fields are kind of like milestones but they’re inside projects.

[WorldLanguages]

Personally, I was looking to create a project board for the ScratchAddons/ScratchAddons repo, but I wanted it to be fully automated. If you've ever heard or used TweetDeck (by Twitter) you know what I'll mean. I was looking for a way to have many cards/columns that each matches a different search filter.
It looks like there's no straight-forward way to achieve that, so I gave up lol. We're stuck with opening many browser tabs, each with a different search term. I'm a bit surprised this doesn't exist yet, as it's a very simple idea.

[DNin01]

What search filtering exactly were you aiming for?

We can always add views to save filters.

[WorldLanguages]

What search filtering exactly were you aiming for?

The search filters we use to search issues and PRs, and filter by labels, milestone, etc. The point being, nothing would be manually editable in the project board, it would simply be a view of many search terms in one page.

[WorldLanguages]

If you've got any ideas tell me, but having to manually edit the issue/PR milestone, labels, and also in the project board, is having to do everything twice for no reason.

[DNin01]

What search filtering exactly were you aiming for?

The search filters we use to search issues and PRs, and filter by labels, milestone, etc. The point being, nothing would be manually editable in the project board, it would simply be a view of many search terms in one page.

You mean the ones on the org README?

[WorldLanguages]

Yeah

[DNin01]

This would be useful mainly just to benefit from the Projects feature set. I believe Iterations are the closest thing to Milestones in Projects. Instead of using Milestones, we could name each iteration after a version number and assign an end date that can be reflected through the project, which would enable us to use the Roadmap view. That whole documentation page is worth a read if you're not already familiar with iteration fields. They look really interesting and I see potential.

How does that sound for an upgrade? Or do Milestones work fine?

[DNin01]

Whew, making a project yours is harder than you think, and I'll have to spend some more time setting up the layout for an ideal experience. The project is ready and available to organization members on the organization Projects section.

I'm currently wondering if this is even the kind of thing we were looking for, but maybe time will tell.

@WorldLanguages Any thoughts now? Over the next few days, I'll try to spend some time with contributor experience in mind as I tweak the project.

[DNin01]

I haven't added a "pinboard" yet and I'm still considering if we need it. At the moment, I have an "Up Next" option for Status which kind of functions like a pinboard for issues and a "review this next" section for PRs. I don't want a pinboard to leave us questioning what should be pinned or divert our attention away from less important but still important items, which is mainly why I haven't made it yet, aside from "Up Next".

[Secret-chest]

Email only.

[WorldLanguages]

Any thoughts now?

Looks good I think, maybe the "explore" view should be renamed? I didn't know what it was showing until I looked at the search filter.

[DNin01]

It's fun watching the items get moved between groups and columns in real time 👀

[DNin01]

Would it be possible to link the project I made to this repo for quick access? The Projects tab will need to be enabled on this repository.

Just means it'll take less clicks to get there, but it's still in its "experimental" phase, so I don't really care if it's linked or not.

[DNin01]

Potentially some other projects too, if we feel like they fit.

[WorldLanguages]

We could also link to them from the org readme

[Hans5958]

I have activated the Projects feature. Sorry for the wait.

[DNin01]

Well, now that it's had some time, what do you think of the To-Do Table project I made a while ago, @ScratchAddons/admins? I imagine it replacing our Backlog milestone and maybe even priority labels (if applicable; I'm not exactly sure how our priority labels were meant to be used). Since it's a project, we can also keep the board private for just us to see and use, but I think it would be nice to make it public, especially if it replaces anything.

What do you think of our Backlog milestone? Milestones typically have an end date, but this one doesn't really, making the completion percentage useless. Other alternatives would be just using priority labels or making a "to do" label. But Projects can make it easier to see what tasks we need to do and when, if we use it as a central location to display them. Plus, we can sort and slice them, save views... various nice things for our workflow. It's a better fit for a backlog and could encourage us to add items as to-dos more frequently, so I propose dropping the Backlog milestone and switching to using this project.

I don't know if it solves @WorldLanguages's suggestion, but it still seems like an improvement to our workflow.

Of course, we could also use both! Milestones are part of the grouping in the project I created. At this point, I think we should keep the version-number milestones we're currently using and integrate them into the project, unless there's a good reason to switch to iteration fields within the project.

[Hans5958]

The Backlog milestone is manual, so I would expect that the new Backlog project is also manual, whereas the current To-Do List test project is automated.

[DNin01]

The Backlog milestone is manual, so I would expect that the new Backlog project is also manual, whereas the current To-Do List test project is automated.

Actually, at this time, it's not fully automated. As I kept experimenting, I've kind of turned the to-do list test project from a milestone sorter into a general, manual to-do list (with automated milestone integration on top), so yeah, it's essentially our new Backlog project.

[DNin01]

I mean, the project doesn't really have to be public. We could instead use our milestones to represent our public roadmap and keep the to-do table private, unless the team is okay with the public being able to see our plans in detail.

It's kind of up to you. I know you're the admins, so I try to only add tasks if I'm at least 90% sure they're planned. I'm not sure how many of you have interacted with the to-do table.

[WorldLanguages]

I think you may be overestimating the "admin" role, it just means admin permissions on GitHub.
It's hard to define what "planned" means on this project, unless it's something like upgrading to MV3. As long as it's not understood as a guarantee of something ever getting done, you'll be okay at judging what's planned/accepted.

[WorldLanguages]

Who knows where this project would be right now if I was more focused on planning, but sometimes you can't have it all. I guess I was never fully ready to get so many contributions and see our user count increase 100x.