News

GitHub Unveils Public Roadmap

• By John K. Waters
• July 28, 2020

GitHub today launched a new publicly accessible repository designed to allow anyone to look into all of the platform's upcoming releases. The GitHub public product roadmap was created to provide users with more information about the features and functionality expected from GitHub over the coming quarters, the company said.

The public roadmap is adds another level of transparency into what GitHub's team is building, said Shanku Niyogi, SVP of GitHub's Products group, in a blog post, via a project board that lays out upcoming releases. "Each item on the board links to a detailed issue with more information about what we're planning," Niyogi wrote, "why it's important, when we expect to deliver it, and a bit about how we expect it to work."

Every product or feature is added to a particular project board column according to the quarter in which it is expected to ship next, GitHub explained on its roadmap page. There will also be an Exploratory column, which is used in conjunction with the in-design and exploring release phase labels for when no timeframe is yet available.

Every item on the roadmap is an "issue," with a label that indicates the release phase that describes the next expected phase of the roadmap item; a feature area that indicates the area of the product to which the item belongs; a feature that indicates the feature or product to which the item belongs; one or more product SKU labels that indicate which product SKUs GitHub expects the feature to be available in; and one or more deployment models (cloud and/or server). Where not stated, features will generally come out cloud first, and follow on server at or soon after GA, GitHub says.

Just to clarify, the release phases include alpha, primarily for testing and feedback; beta, which is publicly available in full or limited capacity; and GA, generally available to all customers. GitHub also categorizes products as in design, which is a "feature discover" phase. "We have decided to build this feature, but are still figuring out how," GitHub says. And there's an exploring phase, during which the team gathers feedback on features under consideration.

The roadmap is currently in a read-only state, with locked conversations, but discussion features are currently being built in partnership with the open source community. Users will eventually be able to share questions and comments publicly on the GitHub Community Forum, or privately via the Share feedbackpage, as they already do today.