Have you ever seen a GitHub notification, made a mental note to circle back, and then later forgot where it happened or couldn’t find it? Ever get pulled away to attend standup and froze when you were asked what you did and what you still need to do?
Rest assured that you are not alone. These are challenges faced by many software engineers. Thankfully there are solutions. I’ll list the Github todos and accomplishments most software engineers want to track before presenting three solutions.
Github todos and accomplishments
Here is a short list of GitHub events and the todo action required from the software engineer:
- Pull request reviewed, changed requested — Make changes.
- Pull request reviewed, approved — Look it over, perhaps test again, and merge.
- Pull request reviewed, commented — Address the comments.
- Pull request in need of review — Request reviews in GitHub and/or some other communication medium.
- Pull request with failing status check — Investigate what is breaking the status check and fix it.
- Request for pull request review — Review the pull request.
- Issue assigned — Work to resolve the issue.
- Open Issue — Manage moving the open issue forward by responding to comments.
- Mention — Respond to messages directed to them with a reaction or comment.
In addition, there are GitHub accomplishments that the software engineer should remember for standup and their own reference:
- Pull requests reviewed, commented, approved, opened, and merged
- Repos and issues created
- Comments and discussions
Option #1 Watch your email inbox or phone
The first alternative is to configure GitHub notifications so that you receive notifications to your phone and email inbox.
Advantages:
- Real-time notifications when things happen.
Disadvantages:
- If there are more than just a few of these notifications, it can be easy to lose or forget about them, especially when they’re mixed with your other email and text messages.
- The software engineer still has to devise some sort of system for marking when items are completed. This could be with email filters, tags, or deletion.
Option #2 GitHub Notifications
The second alternative is to look at the GitHub Notifications page. The filter option allows the software engineer to view only notifications of interest and decrease the noise on the page. There is also the ability to mark items done. For this option to work, the software engineer needs to look at the Notifications page daily and manually mark items as “done” as they complete them.
Advantages
- Built and supported by GitHub.
Disadvantages
- Very manual. The software engineer needs to mark things like open pull requests as “done” to remove them from the main Notifications view even when they’re obviously done, such as is the case for merged pull requests.
- Requires the software engineer to use the GitHub Notifications page as their task management system. Might be ok if all their work is within the walls of Github, but if they do things in other platforms such as Jira, Slack, or Confluence, it means they’re juggling several different task management systems.
Option #3 BeyondDone App
The final option is the BeyondDone app, which allows you to see all your GitHub todos and accomplishments in one view.
BeyondDone goes beyond what is offered through the GitHub platform in many ways. GitHub todo items are automatically marked done and transferred to an Activity page, where it is organized by date or time. In addition, these items are included in an automatically generated standup update ready for your next standup. The Todos page displays the status checks for your pull requests, so you know when there is a failing build to investigate.
Beyond the GitHub platform, BeyondDone aggregates your todos and activity from Jira and Confluence. Github activity related to Jira tickets is grouped. You can add your todos and accomplishments when you have items that don’t currently have a BeyondDone integration. I’ve used these to remind myself to resolve Slack conversations or capture work not covered by a Jira ticket.
I use BeyondDone daily, which has turbocharged my ability to stay on top of things and sell myself better in standup and meetings with my supervisor.
I encourage you all to sign up today. There’s a 30-day free trial with no payment information required.
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