Github issues are a great way to track ongoing changes in a project, but issues themselves are not meant to be a tool for project management. However, the only thing missing for a minimal means of doing so is the ability to prioritise tasks.
An effective way of doing so is to use a kanban approach by using swimming lanes to indicate the status of tasks and who is working on them.
It's important to know at any time what is being worked on, who is working on it, and what is next in the pipeline to be worked on. Github issues provides the ability to do this using labels and assignees.
A simple method to do this is to create labels for 'next', 'progress' and using pull requests when a task is complete. This is especially useful in smaller teams but can scale to bigger teams. It's usable in remote teams also and is hard to get wrong since there is no added complexity and negates the need to use something like huboard.