GitHub is a popular platform used by software developers to host and review code, manage projects, and build software. While primarily used for version control and code hosting, many teams are exploring whether GitHub can also function as a ticketing system for issue tracking and project management.
Using GitHub as a ticketing system has some distinct advantages, but also important limitations to consider. In this article, we’ll explore whether GitHub can serve as a fully-featured ticketing system, or if dedicated issue tracking software is still necessary for teams to manage tickets and tasks effectively.
What is a Ticketing System?
Before weighing whether or not GitHub can operate as a ticketing system, it’s important to define what a ticketing system is and its key capabilities.
A ticketing system is software that allows teams to track issues, bugs, tasks, feature requests, and other items that require attention and resolution. Leading ticketing systems include Jira, Asana, Trello, and more.
Key ticketing system features include:
- Creating and submitting tickets/issues
- Assigning tickets to team members
- Defining ticket priority and severity
- Tracking ticket status like “To Do”, “In Progress”, “In Review”, and “Complete”
- Associating tickets to releases or sprints
- Reporting and dashboards to analyze ticket workload
- Custom fields and ticket types
- SLAs and due dates
- Email notifications
- Collaboration features like comments
Robust ticketing systems provide teams with an efficient way to manage incoming tasks, provide visibility into workload, deliver alerts and notifications, produce reports, and optimize the issue resolution process.
GitHub Ticketing Features
GitHub actually does provide a set of built-in features that can facilitate basic ticketing workflow. These include:
Issues
GitHub Issues allow teams to submit tickets and associate them with repositories. Issues provide the ability to:
– Title and describe each ticket
– Assign Issues to users
– Label and milestone Issues
– Associate pull requests as a resolution to an Issue
– Comment and collaborate on Issues
– Filter and search Issues
– Link related Issues together
With Issues, GitHub provides the ability to intake tickets, route them to the appropriate team members, organize them, and discuss progress towards resolution.
Project boards
To complement Issues, GitHub Project boards allow teams to visualize and manage ticket workflow. Project boards support:
– Kanban-style boards to map status and transition tickets through stages
– Swimlanes for additional categorization like priority or type
– Drag-and-drop ticket management
– Automation using GitHub Actions
Project boards give teams a way to map Issues into broader workflows and gain visibility into where things stand across a portfolio of tickets.
Notifications and integrations
GitHub also provides notifications and integrations that can bolster its capabilities as a ticketing system:
– Email notifications when Issues are updated
– Integration with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord to push updates
– Support for bots and automation
With notifications and chatbot integrations, teams can stay up-to-date on ticket changes without having to constantly check the platform.
Reporting
While GitHub doesn’t have robust built-in reporting, GitHub Issues can be connected to third-party reporting tools like:
– Sisense
– Power BI
– Tableau
This allows managers and executives to generate ticket reports and derive business intelligence from the data.
Limitations of GitHub as a Ticketing System
While GitHub provides basic ticketing capabilities through Issues, project boards, and integrations, relying solely on GitHub does come with significant limitations. Key constraints include:
No concept of “ticket types”
Most ticketing systems allow tickets to be categorized into different types like bugs, improvements, change requests, etc. GitHub Issues are treated as uniform objects.
No service level agreements (SLAs)
Ticket prioritization is difficult without defined SLAs that indicate severity and expected resolution timeframes.
No workflow customization
GitHub Project boards provide basic Kanban workflows, but advanced ticketing systems allow teams to customize status values, transitions, swimlanes, and more.
No time tracking
Ticketing systems allow time spent on tickets to be logged natively for reporting and billing purposes. GitHub Issues don’t have time tracking built-in.
Basic reporting and dashboards
As mentioned above, GitHub’s native reporting is very basic for data on ticket workload, trends, etc. Advanced reporting requires third-party tools.
No concepts of releases or sprints
Tickets are rarely managed in isolation. Tying sets of tickets to milestone releases or sprints is a key best practice that GitHub lacks.
No customer portal
Many ticketing systems provide customer-facing portals that expose support tickets. GitHub Issues are internal-only.
No email handling
Dedicated ticketing systems can intake issues via email. GitHub Issues lack email handling and capture capabilities.
Should You Use GitHub as Your Ticketing System?
Whether GitHub can serve as your primary ticketing system depends on your team’s needs:
For basic or low-volume issue tracking, GitHub may suffice
If your team has relatively simple ticketing needs and a low volume of tickets, GitHub Issues and boards may provide enough workflow management. No need to introduce new software.
For customer support teams, a dedicated ticketing system is likely required
The lack of SLAs, email handling, and customer portals make GitHub a poor solution for customer support teams that rely on mature ticketing workflows.
For engineering teams, GitHub is likely a complement not a replacement
For product development teams, GitHub is likely used alongside a dedicated engineering-focused ticketing system that provides sprint planning, release mapping, reporting, and time tracking.
For business operations teams, GitHub probably isn’t the ticket
GitHub Issues don’t provide the workflow flexibility, custom fields, SLAs and advanced reporting needed for many business operations use cases.
Ticketing System Alternatives to GitHub
For teams that need a more fully-featured ticketing system, popular GitHub alternatives include:
Jira
Jira is a widely-used, robust option for development teams. Key strengths include customizable workflows, multiple ticket types, release mapping, time tracking, and reporting. It integrates well across the Atlassian suite with tools like Confluence and Bitbucket.
Asana
Asana provides excellent collaboration features, custom fields, reporting, and visual ticket boards. The tool is focused on transparency and organization. Mobile apps make Asana accessible.
Trello
Trello uses Kanban-style boards to provide a visual, flexible way to manage tickets. Trello is easy to use and integrates nicely with tools like Slack. Lightweight and affordable.
Zendesk
Zendesk is tailored specifically for customer support ticket management. The system offers robust community forums, customer portals, SLAs, and email integration.
Freshdesk
Similar to Zendesk, Freshdesk is designed for customer support but offers an intuitive interface, helpful automations, and productivity features to streamline ticket resolution.
HubSpot
In addition to CRM, HubSpot provides Help Desk for ticket management. Tickets can be mapped to customer accounts within HubSpot for unified relationship tracking.
Conclusion
While GitHub provides basic ticketing capabilities through Issues and project boards, relying solely on GitHub does come with limitations in reporting, workflow customization, SLAs, time tracking, and more.
For some teams with simple needs, GitHub may suffice as a makeshift ticketing system. But for customer support teams and product development squads, dedicated issue tracking systems like Jira, Asana, Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Trello will likely provide a more robust option.
The ideal solution is often to use GitHub for hosting and reviewing code, while maintaining a separate dedicated ticketing system for tracking detailed tasks, bugs, and issues. By combining GitHub’s source code management with a feature-rich ticketing system, teams can enjoy the benefits of both tools.