ISOM 350

Two Aspects to Manage in Your Software Project

1. Collaboration
2. Project Management

Collaboration

• About coordinating between developers
• Ensures their work can be merged/combined into the project successfully
• Will utilize:
  • Branch and merge features from Git
  • Pull requests from GitHub
• Must agree on workflow

Collaboration Workflow

1. Developer must always create a branch for any new task you work on and NEVER work directly on main branch
2. Developer must publish branch then create a pull request to merge that branch into the main branch when they are done
3. Project manager examines the pull request then merges the work to main branch
4. The main branch must always contain a working and recent copy of the project, so always test it.

Project Management

• Traditionally, it is about completing the project within time and budget
• We are utilizing an agile project management methodology, so:
  • It is about utilizing resources efficiently to make progress in the project
  • There is no end in the traditional sense in agile projects and the project is ongoing

Project Management

• More responsibility on project members to self-organize and pick their tasks
• GitHub ticket board is utilized for Project Management
• Project Manager must ensure information on ticket board is correct and up-to-date

Why Use GitHub Project Ticket Board?

• Helps everyone in the team know who is working on what
• Communicates to everyone in the team what the project tasks are
• Communicates progress
• Coordinates work by allowing members to choose to work on tasks no one else is working on

How the Ticketing System Works

• Each ticket represents a task to be completed
• Tickets representing the requirements of the project are placed in a To-Do list
• Developers assign themselves a ticket to let the other members know what they are working on and move it to In-Progress list

How the Ticketing System Works

• Developer then starts the steps described in the collaboration process and creates a new branch to work on the ticket
• Once done and the pull request is created, the pull request is linked to the ticket and the ticket is moved to the To-Merge list
• Project managers merges all the pull requests and moves their corresponding tickets to the Done list to track progress.

Types of Collaboration

• Synchronous
• Asynchronous

Synchronous Collaboration

• Developer working together on the same file at the same time
• Enabled using replit.com multiplayer repls
• Great for knowledge sharing
  • A form of eXprogramming

Synchronous Collaboration Limitation

• Requires time scheduling
• Limited number of participants (Usually 2)
• Member contribution not tracked

Asynchronous Collaboration

• Developers working together over time
• Enabled using Git and GitHub
  • Integrated with replit.com
• Requires agreement on workflow
• Better fit for large group collaboration and effort tracking

Asynchronous Collaboration Limitations

• Steep learning curve
• Overhead to using the tools
  • Greater benefits with larger groups
  • Still useful for individuals
• Benefit of using collaboration tools might not be clear
• Success dependent on choice from endless workflows

Developer Workflow for Our Course

Branches and Pull Requests

• Always create a branch from main/master to start your work
• Once done, create a pull request to ask the project manager to include your work (merge it) to the project
• Discussion can be started around a pull request where manager can ask members to fix problems in their work
• Pull request is completed if it is successfully merged

Git and GitHub

• You need to distinguish between these two
• Git is the tool we use to keep track of the changes made to our source code and combine our work
• GitHub is the cloud platform hosting our git repositories
• GitHub also introduced social coding and project management features to be used with Git

What About Replit?

• Replit is an cloud based IDE
• You use it to write code
• You can pull and push code between it and GitHub

What About Replit?

• When you work alone you pull/import your work to replit.
• When you want your team to see your work you push it to GitHub from replit.
• You work is cloned (i.e., copied) to Replit and another on GitHub
• Each team member gets their own clone of the project code

What If I Cannot Use GitHub?

• Part of your evaluation in this course is based on how well you collaborate through GitHub
• Using Git and GitHub is a very important skill for developers and managers in this age
• You can complete your final project using Synchronous collaboration on replit.com
  • Your grade will suffer from this