GitHub Issues and GitHub Discussions
GitHub Issues act as the project backlog: each issue can carry labels (e.g., mini-series groupings), milestones (e.g., December 2020 release target), and assignees. Issues feed directly into GitHub Projects kanban boards, where you can drag cards between columns (To Do / In Progress / Done) and configure automation rules so that opening or closing an issue, or merging a pull request, automatically moves the card to the correct column.
GitHub Discussions (launched at GitHub Universe) are enabled per-repository in Settings and complement Issues by providing an open community space. Default categories include Q&A, Show and Tell, and Announcements; these can be customised — for example adding “Episode Ideas” and “Guest Introductions” categories so community members can pitch content publicly rather than via closed forms. An issue can be converted directly to a Discussion when the thread is better suited to open dialogue than to tracked work.
GitHub Actions extend both features: issue events (opened, deleted, transferred, reopened) and project card events can trigger workflows, enabling automation such as auto-closing branches after a PR merge or notifying maintainers when a new discussion is created. The episode also contrasts GitHub Issues with Azure DevOps, which offers richer work item types and sprint iteration tracking, and notes how GitHub Issues and Discussions can serve inner-sourcing teams as well as public open source projects.
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