How GitHub works like an open source project

! How GitHub works like an open source project (and
you can too!) Ben Balter government.github.com [email protected]

! What I’m here to talk about

! How you work is as important as what you
work on

! What I’m not here to talk about

“a particular matter involving specific parties” Why GitHub is awesome

These adorable kittens

! The world’s largest code-sharing platform " Founded 2008 !
VC Funded $100M # Hubbers 232 $ Users 7M % Projects 15M

! Built on open source

! Contributes to open source

! Supports open source

! The constraints of open source

! " Electronic High ﬁdelity mediums expose process

! & Transparent Communicate decisions in realtime, and forever

! ' Asynchronous Focus workﬂow on code, not meetings

! ( Informal Adopt cultures, not polices

! What does your organization optimize for?

! Butt-in-seat is a terrible metric

! Optimize for Happiness developer ^

! Software is an inherently creative endeavor

! You can’t mandate creativity

! Google had 20% time

! GitHub has 100% time

! What’s important to GitHub What’s important to You

! Open allocation (and organic team formation)

! The result: a side project culture

! Internal users are people too

! Half-measures are as bad as nothing at all

! Counterpoint: Business minimalism

! Metawork is a great waste of time

! A culture allergic to administrative distraction

! Prefer social constraints over technical constraints

! Prefer social constraints over administrative constraints

! Non-blocking is better than blocking

! Eliminate work

! Eliminate all humans

! Encourage flow

! How GitHub communicates

Required reading zachholman.com/posts/github-communication

! “Meetings pull you from actual work in order to
talk about doing work”

! email? lolwat

! GitHub | Chat | Team | Halp

! How GitHub uses GitHub to build GitHub (TM)

GitHub uses GitHub for Code Legal HR Blog posts Documentation
Policies Sales Ops

Create a descriptively named feature branch

Add commits

Open a pull request

Discuss and Review

Merge and Deploy

! ) Friction Delay between “I want to contribute” and
“I have contributed”

! * Scripts to rule them all $ script/test Bootstrapping
$ boxen giants $ cd ~/github/giants $ script/bootstrap Running $ script/server Testing

! Chat

! Why chat?

! Chat is inherently asynchronous

! Tapping someone on the shoulder is inherently being a
jerk

! Scheduling a meeting is inherently a violation of the
Geneva convention

! Chat has transcripts

! Chat exposes process

+ Meet Hubot

, ChatOps

# Shared Command Line •View cameras in our datacenter •
Search error logs • Manage and trigger alerts • Perform server maintenance • View load balancer status • Spin up cloud instances • Provision servers • Adjust ﬁrewall ports • Activate DDoS Mitigation • Restart processes • Conﬁgure DNS • Deploy to production

Some other ways Hubot helps Push Notiﬁcations Situational Awareness

Twitter Subscriptions Ops “github down” The Government Room “open source
government” The Danger Room “animal hijinks gif”

! - Continuous Integration (CI)

- Continuous Integration (CI)

. Build Status

/ On each push… •~1,500 test suits •~19,00 tests •~80,000
assertions • x 2 environments (.com, Enterprise) •Tests > 20 seconds are considered a failure •~ 90 seconds to complete

! /Deploy

! Nothing gets deployed unless tests are green

A typical deployment ﬂow Development Staging Production

GitHub's 0 ﬂow Development Staging Production Development Development Staging Staging

1 Branch Labs

2 Queuing

⚡ Doing it live

Meanwhile, back at the pull request…

! Team

Team Web | Android | iOS

! Team communicates… What’s up Ships Ideas Hubbers Notiﬁcations

A communications culture

A distributed company

Profiles

Automated AFK Tripit API

! Halp

What goes through halp? support@ government@ sales@ press@ security@

Halp works just like GitHub @mentions Teams Markdown Emoji Opt
in/out Everything at GitHub

Halp works just like Gmail labels search filters

Eliminate work github.com/benbalter/gman

! Tier-1 support Collaborative support

! Speak like a human

! Tools make the diﬀerence

4 A typical day at GitHub • 230 employees  
(2/3rd remote) • 185 chatrooms • ~30,000 lines of text   (13,000 from Hubot) • ~500 images • 500+ deploys • 1000+ pushes • 320 issues opened •185 pull requests opened   (of which 145 merged that day)

4 A typical week at GitHub/GitHub Authors 78 Commits 1.1k
Files changed 900 Additions 23k Deletions 7k Issues opened 50 Pull requests opened 50 Pull requests merged 200 People merging 60 Issues closed 70

~130 production deploys per day

~41 deploys to GitHub.com per day

! To summarize…

! GitHub Zen api.github.com/zen Responsive is better than fast. It’s
not fully shipped until it’s fast. Anything added dilutes everything else. Practicality beats purity. Approachable is better than simple. Mind your words, they are important. Speak like a human. Half measures are as bad as nothing at all. Encourage ﬂow. Non-blocking is better than blocking. Favor focus over features. Avoid administrative distraction. Design for failure. Keep it logically awesome.

! How GitHub works like an open source project (and
you can too!) Ben Balter government.github.com [email protected]

How GitHub works like an open source project

How GitHub works like an open source project

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