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Work Planning and Tracking

For internal planning and external transparency, all ANC work is documented.

Data curation and data operations are tracked on the ANC GitLab instance.

Collecting development ideas

Development ideas for ANC services are collected in the Ideas Incubator — an issue-only project for ideas that are not yet specific enough or are out of current scope. Once an idea matures, it can be promoted to an epic. Everyone can propose ideas; the ANC community can discuss and upvote them.

Epics and issues

Epics represent larger work items, usually spanning multiple projects or issues. All epics are tracked on the epic board.

Issues track single work items and are tracked on the issue board.

Epic prioritisation

Epics are prioritised using a value-effort matrix with urgency overlay:

Low effort High effort
High value Quick wins Big projects
Low value Fill-in tasks Time sinks

Labels: ~"Epic value::High/Low" × ~"Epic effort::Low/High"

Urgency overlay:

  • ~"Epic urgency::Immediate" — must start right away (critical bugs, security fixes, committed deadlines). Overrides value-effort prioritisation.
  • ~"Epic urgency::Standard" — everything else, prioritised by value/effort.

State overlay:

  • ~"Epic state::Active" — currently being worked on
  • ~"Epic state::Blocked" — blocked by an external dependency

Issue labels

Progress/status:

Label Meaning
~Status::Unspecified Not yet investigated
~Status::Specification Being investigated; specification in progress
~Status::Specified Well defined; work can start
~Status::Implementation Being implemented in a dedicated MR
~Status::Review MR is under review
~Backlog Relevant but low priority or no current resources
~Reconsider May require too much time or is out of current scope
~"Not Applicable" Resolved another way or no longer relevant — close with comment
~"Won't Fix" Relevant but not planned to be fixed — close with explanation

Type:

Label Meaning
~Maintenance Everyday jobs: dependency updates, typos, code simplifications
~"New Feature" Introduces new functionality
~Enhancement Improves existing functionality
~"Bug Fix" Fixes an error in existing functionality
~Documentation Any type of documentation work