Learning Best Practices for GitHub Issue Labels and Creating Required Labels

[laylaylo]

Aim : make easier to get information about the issue by searching a particular label attached to it

These are the label categories we decided to create:

• Priority

• Effort/Size

• Type

• Status

Github documentation about managing labels.
This blog might be helpful.

[hakanaktas0]

I propose for priority,

• priority: Low
• priority: Medium
• priority: High
• priority: Critical

It is hard to state size for sure, so I think we can instead use Estimation,
What each of these represent (S~2 hours etc.) can be decided later by the team.

• Estimation: S
• Estimation: M
• Estimation: L
• Estimation: XL

For type,
More can and should be added, but since we don't do any software development yet, we don't need labels like bug or test-fail.

• type: documentation
• type: enhancement
• type: research
• type: repository

For status,

• status: to-do
• status: in-progress
• status: needs-review
• status: in-review
• status: completed
• status: postponed

Other than these, we can add

• invalid: for invalidated issues
• duplicate: for duplicates

Color coding is also important.
Any suggestions and additions are welcome.

[defabdullah]

I think the tags suggested by the Hakan will be enough. If there is no other recommendation, we can create them.

[laylaylo]

Few small addition, status: unassigned, status: blockedand type: question. Also, we might create platform labels like platform: web, platform: android but I guess it's better to do it when it's needed i.e before implementation phase.

Instead of estimation tag, I suggest adding difficulty and size. Since estimating duration of a task is also challenging and we should have a common way to do that. Indeed, difficulty and size tags could help us to estimate total time would taken by task. My suggestions to these tags:

• Difficulty: starter

• Difficulty: medium

• Difficulty: challenging

• Size: small

• Size: medium

• Size: large

I would like to hear other opinions about estimation or difficulty/size tags. After reaching a consensus, I'll create labels as discussed.

[ArslanArdavic]

It's a good idea to distinguish difficulty and size. More we separate the functionality of labels, better we describe the issues.

[laylaylo]

As discussed offline, we agreed on size and difficulty labels. The time required for a task might be estimated using these labels as follows:

• small and easy: 1-2 hours
• small and moderate: 2-4 hours
• small and challenging: 4-6 hours
• medium and easy: 1-2 days
• medium and moderate: 2-4 days
• medium and challenging: 4-6 days
• large and easy: 1-2 weeks
• large and moderate: 2-4 weeks
• large and challenging: 4-8 weeks or more

Of course, these are just suggestions, and we can adjust them as we go along.

[laylaylo]

Just a friendly reminder for future reference to always include a description for labels and that color coding is also important for better organization.