Open Discussion - cdisc-org/hub GitHub Wiki

Intro

We had a meeting with several people who have had success using GitHub and ZenHub. Here are the notes from that discussion.

Attendees

  • Charles Shadle
  • Anthony Chow
  • Sam Johnson
  • Julie Chason
  • Nicke De Donder
  • Dave Iberson-Hurst
  • Omar Garcia
  • Drew Mills

Agenda from open discussion meeting

  • Intro to the Community of Practice (CoP)
  • Who is already successful with GitHub/ZenHub (introduce yourselves)
  • Teams, projects, and people we are bringing into GitHub/ZenHub
  • How can we help the CDISC users new to these tools to be successful with GitHub/ZenHub
  • Using Slack for the CoP communication center
  • What are the first things we should share?

Action Items

Drew to produce a summary (see below).

Summary of Discussion

I. Onboarding New Teams & Projects to GitHub/ZenHub

  • Projects to Onboard:
    • CDISC Library
    • OAK
    • External projects (potentially from COSA)
    • Dataset JSON API Dev
    • RWD Lineage (?)
    • ODMv2
  • Key Onboarding Questions & Considerations:
    • Licensing: What licenses are we using for these projects?
    • Backups: How are projects being backed up within GitHub? Every clone produces a backup copy
    • Documentation: Can we utilize the GitHub Wiki or Book for documenting the help and training we would provide?
    • Workspace Selection in ZenHub: How do users choose their workspace? (Note: The button is small and not obvious)
    • Duplicate Ticket Prevention: How do we prevent accidental duplicates through PRs or the ZenHub web app?

II. Training & Best Practices for New CDISC Users

  • Understanding ZenHub:
    • Emphasis: It's important to use ZenHub actively. Repeated use is the best teacher.
    • Basics: ZenHub issues are GitHub issues with additional metadata to enable the managing of issues as stories or PBIs.
    • Label Usage: Ensure consistent and meaningful label usage from the start. We can take cues from those who use labels successfully
    • Epic vs. Feature Labels: Clarify the distinction and contrast their values.
    • JIRA Sync: How to synchronize between JIRA and ZenHub if needed.
    • CORE Reconciliation: Streamlining the manual reconciliation process in CORE after development.
    • Reporting Improvement: Explore ways to optimize our usage of reporting features.
    • Potential Training: Consider providing high-level ZenHub training. Do we adopt self-taught courses or something more interactive?
    • Workflow-First Approach: Teams should define their workflow, then adapt the tools (GitHub, ZenHub) to support it.
    • Part-Time Project Support: Determine how best to accommodate part-time projects.
    • Training Alternatives: Explore training for those using GitHub Desktop instead of the CLI.
  • Understanding GitHub Fundamentals:
    • PRs: Explain what Pull Requests (PRs) are and their role in the workflow.
    • Branches: Clarify the concept of branches and their purpose.
    • Binary Merges: Explain what they are and their implications.

III. Communication & Collaboration

  • Slack as CoP Hub:
    • Policy Concerns: Address any potential issues with using Slack due to corporate policies.
    • Asynchronous Discussion: Share DDF's practice of using GitHub tickets for discussions and @ mentions. Determine who needs to be informed about this.
    • Integration: Explore options for integrating Slack and GitHub.