I wish I knew about GitHub Projects native workflows sooner

As I've started stepping into more senior and leadership roles (and managing my own personal projects), one thing that keeps coming up is staying on top of issue organization. Moving an issue from In Progress to PR Review, remembering to ping reviewers, realizing an issue is still sitting in the wrong column because I forgot to call it out in standup.

I recently set up GitHub Projects (v2) with its built-in automation workflows, and I wish I knew about this for earlier projects. The board is seven columns: Backlog, Todo, In Progress, PR Review, Blocked, QA (Staging), and Done (Live).

Most of it runs itself. Issues automatically land in Backlog on creation, move to PR Review when a PR, which is linked to an issue, is opened, and jump to QA (Staging) when that PR merges. If QA fails or PM finds errors and the issue gets reopened, the issue routes back to Todo automatically. The only manual steps are moving issues to In Progress when you pick it up, and confirming it's live in production by moving it from QA to Done.

For anyone moving into lead or senior roles, this kind of setup matters more than it sounds. Less time managing process means more time for actual work, and a board that reflects reality makes it easier to unblock people, run a tighter standup, and keep stakeholders informed without the extra overhead.

The setup is the work. Once it's configured, the board just stays accurate.

Bonus: PR and issue templates. If you're not using these yet, they're a huge time saver for keeping submissions consistent and standardized across contributors. Less back and forth, less missing context, less "can you fill out the description properly."

The Board Setup

  • Backlog — Holding area for all new issues, not yet prioritized or assigned. Auto — issue created.
  • Todo — Prioritized and ready to pick up. Auto on reopen, or manual triage.
  • Blocked — Work has stalled waiting on feedback, a dependency, or a failed review. Manual — set by dev or PM.
  • In Progress — Actively being worked on, dev has started a branch. Manual — dev picks up a Todo item.
  • PR Review — PR is open and awaiting code review. Auto — PR opened with Closes #N.
  • QA (Staging) — Feature is live on staging, awaiting QA sign-off. Auto — PR merged, issue auto-closes.
  • Done (Live) — Confirmed working in production. Manual — PM or QAer confirms.

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