Week 1, Learn · Day 6 of 30
Day 6: Issue-to-PR ratio
Engagement vs shipping, 1.5+ healthy, 0.7- firefighting.
Day 6 in one paragraph: The team-health signal. A startup with a heavy issue queue and a thin PR queue is collecting feedback they can't ship against. A startup with PRs flowing daily and an issue queue that drains is shipping faster than it accumulates problems. You will spend about five minutes, end with a concrete artifact, and the whole curriculum stays free at this URL permanently.
Where this day sits in the 30
Week 1 teaches the six atomic signals one at a time, each on the org you picked on day one. Day 6 of 30 sits 20% of the way through, in week 1, learn, one of four one-week phases. This day also carries a bonus exercise for anyone with extra time. Everything in this challenge is built from public GitHub signals, the same data that powers the weekly deal-flow feed, and the day's lesson is worth roughly €89 in equivalent consulting time by the anchoring we use across the curriculum.
Yesterday
Yesterday's repo-creation reading told you whether the team is building outward. Today's tells you whether they're keeping up with the inbound at the same time.
Why this signal matters
The team-health signal. A startup with a heavy issue queue and a thin PR queue is collecting feedback they can't ship against. A startup with PRs flowing daily and an issue queue that drains is shipping faster than it accumulates problems.
The 5-minute exercise
- 1Open the org's most-active repo.
- 2Click Issues. Note: open count, closed count, ratio.
- 3Click Pull requests. Same, open, closed, ratio.
- 4Compute: PRs closed in last 30 days ÷ Issues opened in last 30 days.
What you’re filtering for
A ratio of ~1.5 or higher (more PRs closing than issues opening). Below ~0.7 means feedback is piling up faster than the team can ship.
Edge case
Some teams use a separate issue tracker (Linear, Jira) and only use GitHub Issues for community reports. In that case, the ratio is misleading. Look at PR count alone, 10+ PRs closed in 30 days is healthy, <3 is dormant.
Bonus
A team that ships faster than its inbox can absorb the next round's hire and accelerate further. A team buried in issues needs the round to hire a triage layer first, the round is firefighting, not acceleration. Same headline number, very different bet.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow is the wrap. I'll show you how to compose all six signals into a single score, and how to run it across 350+ startup orgs in four seconds.
Common questions about day 6
- How long does day 6 take?
- About five minutes of hands-on work against the org you picked on day one. The reading adds another two or three. If you are short on time the exercise alone still delivers the day's point.
- Do I need any tools or paid data for issue-to-pr ratio?
- No. Every exercise in the challenge runs on public GitHub data and a browser. The feed that automates the same checks is available, but the curriculum itself is deliberately tool-free so the habit lands before the tooling.
- What if I miss a day?
- Every day is permanent at its own URL, so you can pick up exactly where you stopped. The sequence matters, each day builds on the previous one's artifact, but the pace is yours. Many people run the 30 days across six or seven weeks instead of four.
Curriculum: /challenge · Methodology: /methodology · Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=6606558