GitHub is an essential tool for collaborative software development, where teams can work together on projects, make changes and keep a detailed record of updates. For a product manager, especially those responsible for overseeing changes to a product, navigating workflows on GitHub can be crucial to understanding development progress and making informed decisions.
In this blog, we will explore how to filter product changes in GitHub from a product person’s perspective:
- Understand the workflow in GitHub
Before delving into the details of filtering, it is critical to understand the basic workflow in GitHub. This includes understanding concepts such as repositories, branches, pull requests, issues, and commits. Becoming familiar with these terms will give you a solid foundation for navigating GitHub effectively.
- Use tags to organize changes
Tags are a powerful way to organize and categorize changes on GitHub. As a product persona, you can create tags that reflect different areas of interest or components of the product. For example, you could have tags such as “New features”, “Bug fixes”, “Performance optimizations”, etc. By assigning tags to pull requests or issues, you can easily filter out changes related to specific areas of the product.
- Configure custom notifications
GitHub provides options to set up custom notifications, allowing you to stay on top of important product changes. You can subscribe to specific notifications for repositories, branches, pull requests, or issues. This allows you to receive instant alerts when relevant changes are made to the product, facilitating ongoing monitoring.
- Using advanced filters in the user interface
The GitHub user interface provides advanced filters that can help you refine your searches and focus on relevant changes. You can filter pull requests or issues by status (open, closed, merged), author, assignee, tags and more. By leveraging these filters, you can customize your view and focus on what matters most to you as a product persona.
- Effective collaboration with the development team
Effective communication with the development team is critical to understanding product changes and ensuring they align with product vision and priorities. Participating in code review meetings, discussing pull requests and issues, and providing constructive feedback are important ways to collaborate with the development team and ensure a smooth workflow.
Conclusion
Filtering product changes in GitHub can be a challenging task, but with the right strategies, you can streamline your process and maintain effective control over development progress. By understanding the workflow in GitHub, using tags to organize changes, setting up custom notifications, leveraging advanced filters, and collaborating closely with the development team, you can significantly improve your ability to manage product changes efficiently and effectively.
References
Timoxley/best-practices: Tidbits of developer best practices from around the web, GitHub. Available at: https://github.com/timoxley/best-practices.
GitHub stream - GitHub documentation (no date) GitHub Docs. Available at: https://docs.github.com/es/get-started/using-github/github-flow.
About change commit requests - github documentation (no date) GitHub Docs. Available at: https://docs.github.com/es/github/collaborating-with-issues-and-pull-requests/about-pull-requests.