Using GitHub on the ReImagine911 National Action Team
This is a short guide with links and resources on how to use GitHub as a member of the Reimagine911 National Action Team. We are using GitHub to manage our projects on the National Action Team to: openly share tasks with other volunteers, create visibility on our current progress, raise questions & celebrate our wins. You can read more on the principles and values behind our tooling and specifically why we’re using GitHub for this purpose.
If you’re not on GitHub yet, sign up for an account >>
Check out the Get Started guides to familiarize yourself with GitHub.
GitHub for Project Management
Right now, we’re establishing the Reimagine911 GitHub as a central project management space for Reimagine911. We hope to enable each team to track progress toward milestones, as well as to share visibility and progress on the Transform911 Working Group and Code for America staff tasks. You can see tasks on the project overview board here. This is still a work in progress; we hope that you can provide feedback & ask questions either by commenting on this post, or submitting an issue.
For volunteer leads
As volunteer teams are getting set up and finding that they need a place to share progress & keep track of tasks, you are invited to join our repository and to create a project board for your team. We’ll continue to maintain the overall project board, which groups tasks by milestone. Separate boards can be created for subgroups on the National Action Team. We encourage you to create and maintain a board for your team, or to delegate someone as a project management lead who is responsible for updating the status on your project.
Labeling and Creating Tasks
Unlike a standard repository, where the project revolves around a codebase, our repository revolves around tasks and tracking project progress. For this context, an issue in Github = a task. When creating a new issue, you’ll want to provide relevant details so that the person taking on the task will be able to complete it. Use labels to mark whether an issue is simply a “question” - or a “volunteer task” or a “staff” task. To ensure your task is tracked to the proper board, associate each issue to both the “Reimagine911 Project Overview” project, as well as your team’s project board.
Mark a task as done
When an issue is complete, mark the issue as closed by checking the box next to the issue and then referring to the “mark as” tab at the top of the interface.
Milestones
Milestones can be added by project leads to indicate significant progress toward our project goals. To see and add milestones, go to the issue tab and click the “milestones” tab next to the new issue button.
Each issue can be labeled as related to any milestone. To associate an issue with a milestone, open the issue and add the milestone on the right, under the projects.
Be aware that the milestone tracker calculates the percentage complete based on open/closed issues. If you only associate one task with a given milestone, then close the task - your milestone will show as 100% complete.
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This is a primer post and will be updated. Feedback is encouraged by commenting on this post, or by submitting a issue on GitHub