At GitLab, we use issues to track all inbound requests. People often come to us with an ask but get pointed to our looker repository to create an issue. We have a couple of templates there to help get to the root of the problem they’re trying to solve, but often there are clarifications that happen, either in the issue itself or in a recorded call that becomes part of the issue.
We can take an ask submitted into an issue- make it into a meta issue (if necessary) and scope all the different pieces appropriately. We work in two-week milestones. We can plan our work for what is reasonable (ish) for that time frame.
This is also useful for the “requester” because he/she knows where to go to check in- the original issue he/she submitted. It’s the single source of truth for progress. Are we working on it? Well, does it have a milestone assigned to it? Is there an open merge request (called pull request in other applications) attached to it? They can answer their own questions, so there is no back and forth “following up” and “updating people.”
It’s certainly not a perfect system, but it’s the best system I’ve ever used!
I hope that helps!
Some resources:
[1] Submitting an issue: https://gitlab.com/meltano/looker/issues/new?issue[assignee_id]=&issue[milestone_id]=
[2] Issue Templates: https://gitlab.com/meltano/looker/tree/master/.gitlab/issue_templates
[3] Our page in the company handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/business-ops/data-and-analytics/