Developers
Don’t lose sight of PRs that involve you.
- Always have eyes on your own pull requests in My PRs.
- See when your PRs have been reviewed.
- Find out when you’ve got failing tests you need to fix.
- See a red X when a teammate merges something that introduces merge conflicts.
- See a roundup of PRs you can’t miss in the Reviewing PRs and Assignee PRs columns.
- No more forgetting, or not realizing, that someone tagged you on a PR and it’s waiting for your input.
- Easily spot when PRs you’re reviewing or assigned to have had updates, and go back and revisit them.
- Find out when your teammates make PRs that might affect your work.
- Watch PRs that you need to pay attention to.
- Ignore PRs that are routine or automated, and don’t affect your work.
- Watch individual pull requests in repositories you don’t visit every day.
- Keep an eye on the progress of an important patch or new feature in a library you’re using.
- Watch your own PRs in repos you don’t work in regularly.
- Find out when someone contributes to your open-source projects.
- Don’t miss a pull request for weeks or months in repos you maintain but don’t visit often.
- Find out when contributors make updates to their PRs and you need to take action again.
Technical Writers
Whether you work in a docs-as-code team, or just need to watch engineering work.
- When engineering code is the source of truth, always know its status.
- Is it merged? In progress? Has it been gathering dust for a month? Don’t rely on Jira or external systems that may not reflect what engineering is doing.
- Find out about things they forget to tell you.
- Not every code change gets a “Docs Needed” flag. When you see every engineering PR, you find out about code changes that need docs updates.
- Ignore things like new tests and internal dependency updates. Only Watch attention to things that have docs impact.
- Keep track of your own work in a docs-as-code team.
- See everything in the “Developer” section above! Keep track of updates to your own PRs, or PRs where you’re an assignee or reviewer.
- Win friends and influence people.
- Seriously. When you know what’s going on, you look very competent. You are more competent. I’m not saying you’ll definitely get a promotion, but…
Team Leads
Easily keep an eye on what your team is doing.
- Watch important PRs, so you can communicate their status when you’re asked.
- Time-sensitive.
- Customer impact.
- High stakeholder value.
- Ignore PRs that don’t matter to you, like automated Snyk updates or low-priority maintenance work.
- Keep an eye on team health.
- See PRs that have been untouched for a long time in the Inactive PRs dashboard. Can they be closed? Should work be shuffled to get them moving again?
- Watch a specific team member’s PRs if they have trouble getting them through review or need technical help. Step in when there’s a coaching opportunity, or acknowledge progress when they make improvements.
- Make sure the right people are doing the right work. Don’t let your seniors spin their wheels on junior tasks. See when people are doing glue work.
Project Managers
Stop chasing engineers for updates!
- Watch PRs for important projects you’re managing, such as adding a new feature or integrating a new technology.
- Ignore PRs for routine work or projects you don’t care about.
- Follow up with team members when things get stuck.
- Find out what’s needed to get things moving again.
- Reassign resources or communicate to stakeholders when blockers arise.
- Don’t wait until someone tells you there’s a problem - check in periodically (or when you don’t see updates) to see what’s happening.
Agencies and Contractors
Keep track of work across many repositories.
- Watch only the PRs that involve you, and Ignore internal client PRs that don’t affect you.
- Always have a snapshot of the status of ongoing work.
- Easily see when there are new updates.
- Follow up with customers when things are stalled waiting for their input or review.
- Follow up with employees if important work isn’t proceeding.
- Figure out where you have over-allocated and under-allocated resources, and move people around to get things done.