Summary

GitLab Marketing team’s guidelines for using issues as the atomic unit of work, covering issue anatomy, key features (weight, templates, task lists, related/blocking issues), and workflow conventions. Core principle: every non-trivial task should be its own issue with a single DRI.

GitLab 行銷團隊的 issue 使用規範,強調每個非瑣碎任務都應有獨立 issue 和明確 DRI,issue 描述應持續更新以反映最新狀態。

Key Points

  • Issues live only in Projects, not Groups — Groups have Epics, not Issues
  • Every issue should have a single DRI (Directly Responsible Individual); multi-person work should be broken into sub-issues
  • Issue descriptions should be kept current: update the description with latest status rather than burying decisions in comment threads
  • Weight convention: 0 = <4h, 1 = half day, 2 = 1 day, 3 = 1.5 days, 4 = 2 days
  • Quick Actions (/label, /assign, /close, /epic) enable fast issue manipulation without UI navigation
  • Issue templates + Quick Actions in the template = consistent labeling/milestone/epic assignment at creation time
  • Blocking relationships: simple related, blocks, is-blocked-by — enables sequential dependency chains

Insights

  • The “every task should be an issue” principle is explicitly stated to enable milestone scheduling and capacity planning — task lists within issues defeat this because they can’t be individually milestoned or assigned.
  • Keeping descriptions current (not relying on comment threads) is a specific practice that trades comment history for navigability — a deliberate UX tradeoff worth noting when designing team workflows.

Connections

Raw Excerpt

“Every non-trivial task related to a Marketing program should be filed as an issue instead of a task list within the description of another issue. When interpreted as a work unit, issues enable better planning and accountability.”