4.4. Writing Good Open Tasks

This section will provide guidance and practice excercises in creating project and contributor tasks.
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  • Reading & project task creation

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Designing Good Open Tasks

The existence of tasks in an open repository is not itself an invitation to get involved. Let’s be honest about the ‘types of tasks’ we’re creating, and then just design properly for those we intend for participation. Below are some types of tasks, and how you might tag them in an open repository.

Meta Task

Meta, Parent, or ‘Feature Tasks’ are a great way to track the overall progress of an initiative or project goals per milestone. Unless identified as being this type of task though it can lead to a frustrating journey for someone interested in participation. Here is an example of a Meta Task.

Good First Task

Note: In Github Tasks are called Issues, but they mean the same thing : an action, or parcel of work to be completed.

Good first bugs should be the equivalent of ‘hello world’ for your project. That means the steps required to complete that task are clearly documented, require entry-level skill for your project technology and ideally - in no way on a critical path for a release. Some examples of good first bugs are:

  • Remove white space
  • Change font color for all H2
  • Remove debug code on line 152.
  • Add welcome message for screen readers.

Here is a template for a good first task. Initially, this might feel like a lot of work, but it really saves time in the long run - filtering out questions, helping contributors connect more quickly to opportunity and building trust in the process.

Project Tasks

For those issues and tasks that are not ideal for new contributors, use labels to describe the work being done. This CONTRIBUTING.md file shows the breakdown of how one project labels their tasks:

contributingtags

Assignment:

  • Create at least one ‘Good First Task’ for your project using the provided template.
  • Create at least one Meta task for your project using the provided template.

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