Kanban board is a tool to manage workflow. In essence, the work is divided into columns, that represent teams with their resources. The goal is to move tasks across columns from one side to the other. When this happens with any single task, it usually represents that the task is finished.

The catch is that all columns have a limited height, meaning there is a limited number of tasks that can occupy given column, or in other words, a given resource. For instance, if there are too many tasks in column started but not a single one in column testing, a new task (for instance new feature development) cannot be started, before at least one of the tasks in started column does not move further. This process ensues that continual progress is made.

Gitea supports Kanban board functionality since version 1.13.0. It was implemented with the PR #8346. Although Kanban board usually connects with DevOps and Agile development, it can be effectively used to manage less esoteric terms, for instance a team of woodworkers or myself. I myself could possible benefit greatly of such a board. Because in reality, I do have gazillion projects in a column started or bought a domain, but almost none in project is finished.

First impressions

I have tested the Kanban board functionality in Gitea, which at a time of writing sits at the version 1.13.5. After a little bit of shy clicking around I got more comfortable with the way it is implemented. I made a board that made me proud. All the tasks nicely ordered in columns by their category.

After doing some some screenshots I got embarrassed. Do not make the same mistake as me, ordering tasks by grouping similar tasks. This is what tags (or Labels as they are called in Gitea) are for. Kanban board columns is specifically designed for stages the task is currently in.

If you are a little bit confused about all the used terms here, fear not, you are not alone. In fact, there is quite a discrepancy around in most of services developers use for this purpose. GitHub, GitLab, Trello and Gitea all have different naming for the visual components of their Kanban board implementation. Yeah, in Gitea it is called Projects.

User remram44 created quite detailed issue #13802. The proposal of the issue is to some renaming for taking things more on par with the rest of the established industry players.

I love Gitea and I even kind of start to like the what the board is implemented there the more I use it, but I also believe that the naming should be more consistent. Please Gitea do not get back into this Arduino shields, Raspberry Pi hats, BeagleBone capes naming mess scenario again.

This is a 12th post of #100daystooffload.