When developing software, it is important that the right tool is used, which makes it possible to achieve the desired result in steps. At school, Trello was mainly recommended to use because it is free and flexible. I often used Trello for many school projects. From the start I didn't think the tool was great. I missed many parts that were not included as standard. You could get these via power-ups, but then you often had to pay. As a student I was not willing to do this at the time.

During one of my internships, the company where I interned worked with Jira. When I started working with this, I quickly saw that a lot is possible with this tool. For example, you can create a board for development, but you could also create a board for bugs. This way you had sufficient overview. From that moment on I was convinced this was a good tool to work with. Then I started using Jira mainly for my own projects, but also for group assignments at school.

Until two weeks ago I started delving more into Github projects. Before graduating, I had to look at which tools I wanted to work with. So I started investigating what else was possible besides Jira. While looking at these different tools, Github projects also came up.

What is is Github projects?

control and collaboration on software development projects. GitHub Projects is designed to help teams and individuals manage and track the progress of their projects, whether they are software development projects, content creation, or any other type of collaborative work. It provides a visual and flexible way to organize and prioritise tasks and keep tabs on project status.

From Jira to Github projects

I had heard of Github projects before, but had never actually worked with them. To try it out I created a test project. At first I found it a bit confusing how precise the structure of the Github project was. This way you do not create a project for a repository, but you create a project for the organization in which you belong. You can then indicate in the project to which repository this specific ticket is intended.

The advantage of this is that you can create a project per team. In the team you can then see all your projects that you tackle as a team. This means you don't have to set up everything per project to make it the same everywhere. You only have to create a kind of template in one place. You can then filter the projects using filters, but you can also filter other fields.

What I especially like about the Github project is that your code is also within Github, but now also your project management. This way you don't have to keep track of everything in two places. This way you can easily create a branch via an issue on Github and you have a better overview.

You can also use Github's CLI to manage your project in your terminal. This way you can easily view an issue via the terminal and you no longer have to go all the way to the browser to view it.

A disadvantage with Github projects is that you cannot easily get a client within Github projects. For this, the customer must create a Github account. This can be a bit overwhelming for a customer. You can of course also question whether a customer has access to Github projects.

For teams that are not yet using Github projects, I would challenge them to give it a try to see if it is something for them. I think eventually using it in conjunction with the CLI will allow the team to be more productive.