Creating Issues

To facilitate efficient communication and assist the team in understanding and addressing issues quickly, please use the following guides to create issues. If you're uncertain how to categorize a particular issue, try writing it up first and then seeing which type it fits best with, or tag someone from the team for help in labeling/classifying.

Labels for each issue type exist and should be applied accordingly, which will help the team prioritize work. Please file issues in the MapStory/mapstory repo here: https://github.com/MapStory/mapstory/issues.

Any issues created that don't follow these guides risk being closed by the team until they've been sufficiently revised. Closing issues that don't conform to these standards helps the team focus on tasks that are understandable and achievable. However, don't be discouraged! If your issue is closed, take that as a signal that more information is needed before the team can properly prioritize and begin work, and try again. Closing issues without enough information prevents a cluttered backlog (which can get pretty gnarly over time).

• Feature - Features provide value to the end user, allowing them to do or accomplish something that wasn't previously possible. This includes improvements to and expansions of existing features, and isn't necessarily limited to the UI. Read more about how to request a feature.

• Spike - A spike is an effort to research a specific feature before implementing it. The outcome of a spike usually isn't something visible to the end user, but rather helps the team reach a decision about how to implement something (what technology to use, what steps to take, gathering research, etc.), and may result in the creation of feature issues. Spikes are usually created by team members, to be completed in advance of another task. Read more about how to create a spike.

• Bug - A bug is a problem which impairs or prevents users from accessing or utilizing features in a way that is unexpected or unintentional. Read more about how to report a bug.

• Design Story - Design stories characterize a problem or frustration that users experience, which may be quite large and involve several pages on the site, or may deal only with an isolated widget or visual treatment. Design stories result in consultations, mock-ups, click-able prototypes, or other visual collateral that will be used to create a feature request(s). Read more about how to request a design story.

• Milestone - A milestone is a collection of issues (any combination of the above) that should be completed together. It may signal a relationship between issues that depend on each other, and/or correspond to a production release. Milestones define an achievable goal and help the team focus on completing it. Read more about how to create a milestone.