Webcast • Github for Project Management

(woman) Hello there everyone,

we're about one minute before the start
of our webinar,

and we'd like to do a quick audio check,
just to make sure everyone can hear us ok.

So, I have put a poll up on the screen

about our audio levels,
if you could please just let us know.

(man) Okay.

(woman) Great. It looks like we
are in good shape then for our audio.

So we are right at 12:00,
and we will go ahead and get started.

First up, I'd like to introduce myself,
my name is Cynthia Rich.

I am a trainer with GitHub
and I am joined today by Allen Smith,

another trainer...
I'm from GitHub

and we're going to trade off today
as we go through this topic

and share some of our relevant
experience with you.

Today's session is about project
management and how we use GitHub

to manage projects within GitHub.

So really quick, just so we know who
we have on the phone with us,

on the webinar with us, excuse me,

a little more about you,
I've put a poll up to tell us

a little bit about your project
management experience.

While you're doing that
I'm going to tell you

a little bit about
what we hope to accomplish today.

So during today's webinar
we'd like to share with you

some of the best practices
that we've found

for managing projects using
the GitHub architecture.

So we as a company manage
all of our projects within this platform

and we store all of our conversations,
communication, everything goes here,

and so we want to share with you
the secrets that we use

to make this effective and to ensure
that we can collaborate effectively

and communicate effectively
across our team.

So it looks like, okay great...

So it looks like we have a good split
of folks who do alot of project management

and then some folks who
are interested in the topic.

If you have someone on your team
that you'd like to share this webcast with

we will be recording this and we'll send
you a link after we finish up.

So I'm gonna go ahead and close the poll.

And, I'd like to jump right in and show
you what we're going to accomplish today.

The project we've set up that we'd like
to show you today

is a very basic GitHub Pages page.

Now if you're not familiar
with GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages is our,
essentially free web hosting platform.

It allows you to connect
your GitHub repository directly

to this GitHub Pages and set up
a project webpage,

something that you can communicate
with the outside world about your project.

So again, these are free to set up.

There are instructions on this page
we're showing you here pages.github.com

You can go there and it'll tell you
everything you need to know for how

to set up your repository
to communicate with this page.

The page that we have set up
is actually a little cookbook

So let's go back over,
and if you'll, there we go...

Our Project Management Cookbook,

and you can see there this is
a really simple page

just something we set up for example sake

with a few links to some
different recipes,

hopefully this isn't lunch time
for everyone,

we'll all be hungry when we get done.

But like I said,
a really, really simple page

'cause what we really want to show you
is what's under the hood,

or what's behind the scenes that's
helping us to manage this project.

So, as you know, everything within GitHub
is managed within a repository

and that repository is the collection
of everything relating to your project.

So your project files, your project
communications, all of the metrics

involving your project.

Everything within your project is stored
in this repository.

Now in order to do some of the things
that we are going to show you today,

we had to make a few assumptions,

and one of those is that you're an owner
on the repository that you're working on.

So if you're not an owner
on the repository

there may be a few things
we're gonna show you along the way

that you won't be able to do

and so you might want to either look into
changing your permissions level

or how to work out getting some of these
tasks accomplished

with someone that has
the appropriate permissions.

So, I'm gonna start by just walking you
through the interface

showing you how we use some
of the different sections within GitHub

and I'm gonna start on the right hand side.

Right now you can see that we're
on the Code tab over there on the right

and the Code tab is exactly what it sounds
like, these are your source files.

This is all the content that belongs
to the repository,

that is then shown on that webpage.

Below that we're gonna see Issues
and Poll requests.

We're gonna talk a lot about those
in just a minute,

so we'll come back to those.

But one of the things that's really useful
within the project is the Read Me file.

The Read Me file...

There are a couple of magic words,
the Read Me file being one of them,

and with the Read Me file,

this is a page that's automatically gonna
render on the front page of your project.

So when someone comes to visit you
they can see all of the information

in your Read Me file
just as its shown here.

Now in our Read Me file we've decided
to put some more information about

how to add recipes to our cookbook,

so a little information about
how to contribute to it.

We've even provided a recipe template
so if someone wants to contribute a recipe

they can just copy and paste that
into a text file, put in their recipe

and then commit it
and do a poll request back to us.

We tried to make it really easy for people
who wanted to join in.

THere is another type of file that you
may see commonly,

called a CONTRIBUTING.md,

and that file tells people
how to contribute.

This page is a little different because
this page is only going to show up

when somebody tries to submit
a poll request,

to actually contribute a recipe
to the cookbook.

So we'll see that in action
in a little while.

Now you'll notice that we do have some
basic formatting on all of these pages

and if we click the little pencil button
there, we can see, that all of these pages

are written in a very lightweight language
called Markdown.

Markdown is really basic, really simple

as you can see the header there is just a
hash mark and a space

and then your header.

Our bullets are created
with simple dash marks.

There are actually guides
on using Markdown

we won't get into that in the course
but we will include a link

in the course notes for you
so you can go in and find out how

to do Markdown on your own.

So like I said, really simple language
to use and we're gonna show you

a couple pretty cool things you can do
with it in just a little while.

So, another option
I'd like to show you

that is particularly useful
for project managers is the wiki.

Not gonna get into this too much,
I think most of you probably know

what wikis are,
just a collection of pages,

but these are really good for if you want
to store a project schedule maybe,

or a budget, or maybe a team charter,
something like that

you can put that here.

And like I said, we won't spend a ton
of time on that.

On the top bar, lets look up there
where we talk about

watching and starring and forking,
and what are those things.

One of the things as a project manager
you're probably going to be pretty

interested in what's going on
in your project,

so you'll want to watch the communications
and conversations that are coming through

and any of the actions that are happening.

So if that's the case, then you'd want
to select this option here to be watching.

So you would get literally a notification
any time someone creates a poll request,

commits something, closes something,
you're gonna get a notification.

But maybe you decide you don't want
that much information about your project,

you can choose Not watching,

and if you choose Not watching,
notice there that you'll still be notified

if you participate in a conversation,

so if you add something to a discussion
you'll continue to get notifications

about that discussion.

The other key there is if someone
@ mentions you.

So if someone is entering an issue
and specifically says,

"Hey, I need your help with this Bill,
can you give me your opinion",

then you'll still get a notification.

So Not watching doesn't mean
you'll never find out anything,

it just means its a more limited set
of information.

And then of course, you could ignore it,
which I don't think you'd want to

as a project manager, but I guess that's
always your option.

The other option there is to Star
a repository.

Starring is a little bit more
like bookmarking.

So we get this question a lot, what is the
difference between Watching and Starring.

Starring essentially will add these stars
to your homepage.

So if we star this page and then go back
and look at GitHub teachers homepage

you'll notice down here
on the left hand side there's a Starred

and you could click that link to see any
of the pages you've starred.

So its just a way to keep track of pages
that look interesting to you,

and a nice way to bookmark those pages
to come back to them later.

So, what I'd like to do
is run back to the main repository

and we're gonna jump right in to talking
about some of these core

communication tools we use within
our projects.

We're gonna start with Issues
and Poll requests

and I'm gonna ask Allen to jump in here
and help me with these

and I'm gonna have Allen tell us
a little bit more about Issues.

Before I do, I just want to say
the difference between these two

to conceptually think about these,
if you think about Issues as

"I have a question,
or I see something that's wrong,

but I don't know what to do about it",
then you'd enter an Issue.

If on the other hand, you have a question
you know how to fix it,

or already have fixed it,
then you're gonna use a Poll request.

So that's how we think about these

to kinda separate what goes
in each of these buckets.

And now I'm gonna turn it over to Allen,

to give you more information about Issues.

(Allen) Alright, yeah, thank you Cynthia.

So let's dive right in and take a look
at our Issues here, on the Issues tab.

And, its right there under our Code tab,
go ahead and click that.

So traditionally when you think
about issues

in terms of software development

you think that issues represent
problems, represent bugs,

and that's certainly the case.

Depending on how your project is set up,
you may be using Issues to track bugs,

or possibly even enhancements.

If this is sort of a general project

you may want to use this to track your
project requirements for instance.

And that's sort of what we've done
in our example here.

So if you notice in our Issues list,
we have several different recipes

that are to be added to our cookbook.