Doug's List of Issues trying to do AGILE planning with gitlab

How to Use GitLab
1

:hugs: Please help fill in this template with all the details to help others help you more efficiently. Use formatting blocks for code, config, logs and ensure to remove sensitive data.

Problem to solve

Describe :
This is an ongoing list of friction I’m encountering using GitLab as a reference for developers. I’m using this purely as an AGILE planning tool for project management.

  • What are you seeing, and how does that differ from what you expect to see?

  • Consider including screenshots, error messages, and/or other helpful visuals

Steps to reproduce

Which troubleshooting steps have you already taken? Can you link to any docs or other resources so we know where you have been?

Configuration

Provide screenshots from the GitLab UI showing relevant configuration, if applicable.
On self-managed instances, add the relevant configuration settings or changes.

Versions

Please add an x whether options apply, and add the version information.

  • Self-managed
  • GitLab.com SaaS
  • Dedicated

Versions

  • GitLab (Web: /help or self-managed system information sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:env:info):

Helpful resources

  1. Check the FAQ for helpful documentation, issues/bugs/feature proposals, and troubleshooting tips.
  2. Before opening a new topic, make sure to search for keywords in the forum search
  3. Check the GitLab project for existing issues. If you encounter a bug, please create a bug report issue.
  4. Review existing troubleshooting docs.
    I wouldn’t call these bugs, just a list of expectations vs experience and issues using gitlab
    Thanks for taking the time to be thorough in your request, it really helps! :blush:
2

Retrospective:

Interesting that Gitlab has no Retrospective capability. By that I mean a function that creates a retrospective, ties it with a particular sprint, has a template to fill out for issues seen and action items, etc. Even having a wiki with a drop down selection where you could use the template which has the ability to tie it to the existing sprint (iteration) would have been helpful. Using gitlab is like walking into a bakery and asking if they have loaves of bread and they say “of course we do! The flour is over there, the yeast is in the freezer, and feel free to use the oven”. Like sprint (iteration) planning boards (“of course we have an iteration planning board! first create a label over here, then go over to this other place and create a list, and then arrange the lists”).

3

I’m not sure about the topic description, but I’d encourage you to create feature proposals and add feedback to existing issues. That helps product and engineering teams to directly address your thoughts and suggestions.

1 Like
4

You might find these resources helpful or insightful:

1 Like
5

Your list was very helpful, thank you! My complaint about gitlab and why it is a poor fit for my agency remains. Gitlab is a very poor tool for doing agile planning compared to Jira as its feature set is very limited. One link talks about how to use velocity reports and their value, but gitlab has no velocity report. So it talks about creating a spreadsheet in google docs and then copying the data from gitlab. In Jira you click velocity report. For retrospective it states to create an issue with the title “retrospective” and assign it to the current sprint. In jira it creates one for you automatically when you close a sprint. Gitlab has manual processes as work arounds vs features that simply exist. The sprint planning board is manually created from lists using labels va simply creating a sprint cycle with the click of a button. To get a team up and running using gitlab takes maybe 5 times as long as jira. To track it with metrics maybe 100 times longer. And requirements traceability matrix? It’s hard to get people to do agile and keep your issues tracked, but to ask them to do it using a product where everything needs to be done manually is simply asking for failure.

6

Jira is a project management tool for issue and task tracking. Gitlab is like Github a platform for version control and collaborative coding. So you can’t compare the two, when Jira doesn’t even do things that Gitlab does. You do not commit code to Jira, since you need to then integrate it with Gitlab or Bitbucket. They are two different products.