Processes, not more tools
GitHub Enterprise gives you feature rich tools for communication, code transparency, team structure, and permissions just to name a few. These features make it easier to collaborate and create a better software development experience, but they don’t make you an InnerSource company. If used without structure and with a convoluted alignment of InnerSource practices, GitHub Enterprise alone won’t reduce collaboration or integration issues and the bottlenecks within you organization will remain.
- InnerSource isn’t adding another tool
- InnerSource is the process by which you use your tools
Here are a few tools that drive open source development on GitHub. They’ll also be key components of any innersource project.
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Issues: Issues are where developers bring up topics and start conversations. If someone finds a bug or has an idea for a new feature, an issue is a great place to start—and anyone with access to it can join in on the discussion. Learn more about issues.
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Pull requests: Pull requests are living conversations about changes that developers would like to make to a project. They’re where people start working on solutions and review changes that are in progress. Learn more about pull requests.
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Synchronous chat channels: Sometimes teams need to make quick decisions. Synchronous chat channels like Slack are complementary to discussions and comments on GitHub and great for talking through problems in real time. There are hundreds of tools available to use with GitHub that can help your team work better, from project management to continuous integration and deployment services.
Group Discussion: GitHub evaluation
Purpose: To identify how your organization uses GitHub features and tools.
Steps:
- Separate into small groups of 2 or 3 and identify how your organization or team uses the following GitHub features and/or tools:
- Issues
- Pull Requests
- Team structures
- Permissions
- Map out the above
- Talk about these features collectively