How GitHub Uses GitHub: Communicating with Issues

From product design mocks to user help content, GitHub teams use GitHub to build just about everything—and they're often collaborating across different timezones. As we continue to build products that fit all of your team's use cases, we're sharing insights into what's worked (and what hasn't worked) for our team's unique challenges in a new series.

In this session, you'll get the training we give new team members when they join GitHub. We'll cover strategies for clear communication, visual structure in issue comments, and how to facilitate discussion. These strategies are integral to how our team uses InnerSource and may help your team's InnerSource approach.

Transcript

1. the best way to build and ship software Communicating with Issues How GitHub uses GitHub
2. the best way to build and ship software 2 Cynthia Rich @crichID, Manager of Training
3. the best way to build and ship software A few logistics 3 ▸ 40 minutes presentation, 10 minutes Q&A ▸ Please ask questions in the GoToWebinar Q&A panel ▸ Recording ▸ Yes, we are! It will be sent via email after the presentation. ▸ Additional Questions ▸ services@github.com
4. the best way to build and ship software In this session, we will focus on the communication patterns we use here at GitHub. This includes: ▸ Organizing people and projects ▸ Organizing Issues and Pull Requests ▸ Optimizing your written communication ▸ Providing visual structure to support your ideas 4 Our goals
5. the best way to build and ship software 5 How we communicate
6. the best way to build and ship software 6 Organizing people
7. the best way to build and ship software How we think about teams ... 7 Organizational Teams services services-engineering services-tools services-training services-operations Project Teams project-lily-spider Affinity Teams blacktocats Location Teams emea north-carolina }
8. the best way to build and ship software Liberal @ mentions 8 ▸ Filtering emails is an art form ▸ Direct mention vs. team mention ▸ We unsubscribe
9. the best way to build and ship software Organizing projects 9
10. the best way to build and ship software Key ingredients of a project 10 ▸ README.md ▸ CONTRIBUTING.md ▸ ROADMAP.md ▸ ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md ▸ PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
11. the best way to build and ship software 11 Flexible project boards
12. the best way to build and ship software 12 Organizing issues and pull requests
13. the best way to build and ship software Using assignees 13 ▸ Assignees are used to indicate who is responsible for the next step. ▸ Changes to assignees are documented in the Issue or Pull Request ▸ Every discussion has an assignee
14. the best way to build and ship software 14 Another benefit of assignees
15. the best way to build and ship software Labels should fit the needs of your project 15 Your perfect set of labels
16. the best way to build and ship software 16 The power of the written word
17. the best way to build and ship software We write A LOT 17 GitHubbers communicate differently: ▸ We focus on inclusive communication ▸ We rely heavily on async communication ▸ We believe in crafting communication for our future selves
18. the best way to build and ship software 18
19. the best way to build and ship software What are you trying to accomplish? 19 Three questions ...
20. the best way to build and ship software Who are you trying to reach? 20 Three questions ...
21. the best way to build and ship software What action do you want taken? 21 Three questions ...
22. the best way to build and ship software ▸ Perception ▸ Investment ▸ Support 22 Always consider your reader
23. the best way to build and ship software ▸ BLUF ▸ tl;dr ▸ RACI ▸ SCIPAB 23 Useful Techniques
24. the best way to build and ship software 24 BLUF
25. the best way to build and ship software 25 tl;dr tl;dr is an acronym for Too Long, Didn’t Read. It is typically used at the beginning or end of a long post to provide a summary for the reader to gauge the level of investment they have in the long form content.
26. the best way to build and ship software 26 RACI Code RACI Summary Details R Responsible “The doer” The individual who actually completed the task. This is person is responsible for action/implementation of the deliverable. A Accountable “The buck stops here” The individual who is ultimately accountable for the correct and thorough completion of the deliverable. C Consult “In the loop” The individual(s) to be consulted prior to a final decision or action. This is two-way communication. I Inform “Keep in the picture” The individual(s) who need to be informed after a decision or action is taken. This is one-way communication.
27. the best way to build and ship software 27 SCIPAB
28. the best way to build and ship software 28
29. the best way to build and ship software 29 # markdown
30. the best way to build and ship software 30 Our favorite markdown features ▸ Links & cross references ▸ Tables ▸ Headers ▸ Bold & italics ▸ Quotes ▸ Images ▸ Code blocks ▸ Task lists ▸ Dropdowns
31. the best way to build and ship software 31 Cross references and links
32. the best way to build and ship software 32 Tables
33. the best way to build and ship software 33 Basic formatting
34. the best way to build and ship software 34 Quoting text
35. the best way to build and ship software 35 Images
36. the best way to build and ship software 36 Code blocks
37. the best way to build and ship software 37 Task lists
38. the best way to build and ship software 38 Simple dropdowns
39. the best way to build and ship software The Ultimate Guide to Markdown 39
40. the best way to build and ship software 40 A few more helpful tips
41. the best way to build and ship software 41 Reactions and emoji voting
42. the best way to build and ship software 42 Indicating the scope of the ship
43. the best way to build and ship software 43 A whole new level
44. the best way to build and ship software ▸ July 25: Communicating with issues ▸ August 22: Communicating with remote teams ▸ September 26: Managing your teams ▸ October 24: Managing your projects ▸ November 28: Writing documentation for your projects Sign up at services.github.com 44 How GitHub Uses GitHub
45. the best way to build and ship software Questions? 45