Zenhub/GitHub Training June 2020

Agenda Item 1:

GitHub/Zenhub Training

Discussion:

Training by Philip:

Philip is the executive officer of the JCSDA involved in business operations. CRTM work is important for the AOP. Phil is starting a presentation.

The goal of the training is to gain a higher understanding of the Agile Programming methodology and how to use the Zenhub tool; Introduction to AOP; The AOP maps the scope of work for the current FY. It contains all the work people are involved in. The AOP2020 approves the use of GitHub and Zenhub.

What is agile? It is a time-boxed iterative approach to software delivery. It is lean, fast, and pragmatic and increases the chances of project success. You cannot gather all requirements up front and there is always more to do.

Traditional project management has triple constraints:

• Scope
• Schedule
• Cost

This constraint triangle upside-down is agile.

Adopting agile allows adding or removing Scope. In software engineering merging should be frequent. There are periods of more focused work called sprints. This reduces risk. There are 12 guiding principles called the Agile manifesto.

How do we manage all the work? -With Zenhub.

Zenhub is just a project management interface for GitHub. It is about tracking issues in pipeline.

The training will focus on creating issues and linking Epics. At biweekly meetings the issues should be checked for correctness. In the AOP all tasks are Epics. Milestones are a way of reporting burndown. ‘Story points’ in ‘Estimates’ measure velocity. Estimates are a way to measure complexity. Zenhub scale is based on the Fibonacci sequence. Zenhub has a layered structure from Projects down to Checklists:

Projects -> Epics -> Issues -> Checklist

If an Epic is very complex it can be broken down in Sub-Epics. This makes it more difficult to navigate Epics, however. A CRTM example is shown (CRTM1.2).

The Sub-Epic CRTM 1.2.2 (Create GIIRS coefficients) is also an Epic. Zenhub sorts these things in a layered structure.

This is all new for everybody; Some useful links are provided at the end of the presentation. Please reach out if you have any questions.

Questions:

(Q) Isaac: Most of the work that I do, such as creating new sensor coefficients, is not going into GitHub, so using Zenhub is a lot of additional effort.

(A) Ben: The easiest thing you can do is also open an issue. The actual effort is small.

(A) Philip: Very good and relevant question, especially if you are contributing from a partner agency. It doesn’t matter how small your contribution is, but you are part of a team. Zenhub is the tool we use to track progress. Ben’s responsibility is to manage all contributions. For the CRTM as an example, there is a feature called roadmaps. You can see this for all JCSDA projects. This represents all Epic. The Roadmap bars indicated progress. Bottom line: No matter how small your task is, you need to make sure to work with Ben to record it.

Ben: Email me or Phil if you have any additional questions.

Result:

All participants have received basic Zenhub and Agile training.

Tasks:

-       Create Zenhub issues for your AOP tasks.

Responsible People:

Philip Gibbs

Deadline:

AOP 2020