New GitHub Issues – first impressions

GitHub is working on a new version of their project managing application, which will be tightly coupled with whole GitHub flow by itself. The project is currently in limited public beta – you can sign up here and wait for the access.

First impressions

I had the opportunity to use it for a while, and here are my quick first impressions:

1. It's kept in GitHub convention, with all pros and cons of its UX design.
2. You can create many views for each project, and switch between them smoothly.
3. All views can work in list or board layout, and you can switch them any time.
4. Creating a new item in the board layout is basically narrowed to its name. You can't and any extra fields, labels etc.
5. To add extra fields like iteration number, maybe some other option – you need to switch to list mode.
6. Every item can be converted to issue, you just need to choose one of your repositories.
7. Automation for every column was replaced with workflows. This new approach looks very promising, but for now, it offers only basic default workflows. You can turn them on and off, change their settings a little, but you cannot create your own. It's marked as "coming soon".
8. It's fast! One thing I truly hate in JIRA is its performance. GitHub Issues is fast as hell, but to be honest – it looks poor even compared to old projects version.

What is missing?

What should be added before taking it serious:

1. We must be able to edit items from each type of layout, not only from the board one.
2. It should be possible to add a description for the item draft.
3. There must be some kind of summary preview like in old version of GitHub projects.

Should I use it?

Is it ready for business use? No, definitely not (it's still in beta stage, right?). There is a long way ahead of them, but I support the whole project strongly because it's time to break the dominance of JIRA in project managing software. So, keeping the fingers crossed!