Open Discussion

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.