Use GitHub’s project management tools to plan and track your project’s progress. Start by creating project boards to organize tasks into columns like “To Do”, “In Progress”, and “Done”. Add each task as a card on the board and assign it to yourself or team members. This allows everyone to see the status of work at a glance.
GitHub projects also allow you to track time spent on tasks. Enable tracking on individual tasks or for the whole project to see where time is being spent. This time data can help with planning future work and improving estimates.
When starting work, create branches for new features or changes rather than directly committing to the main/master branch. Name branches meaningfully so others understand the purpose without additional context. For example, use names like “feature/login-page” rather than just “feature-branch”.
As work progresses, commit changes early and often to the feature branches with descriptive commit messages. Comments should explain what changed rather than just saying “updated code”. Frequent, small commits make collaborating and reviewing changes easier for others involved.
Before integrating branches back into main, make sure all tests pass and the code meets quality standards. Use GitHub’s pull request process to propose and review changes before merging. Assign the pull request to teammates or mentors for an additional review. Address any feedback in the branch before merging.
For longer running projects, synchronize work periodically by merging main into feature branches. This prevents features from diverging too much from the main codebase as the project evolves over time. Resolve any conflicts that arise promptly.
As capstone deadlines approach, pay extra attention to closing outstanding issues and pull requests in a timely manner. Triage items that still need addressing to focus efforts. Set expectations with mentors about timelines and what may not get finished versus what is a priority to complete. Communication is key.
Use GitHub projects, wikis and other documentation features to share project details externally. Maintain readme files, architecture diagrams, component descriptions, API documentation and more to provide context for future capstone students or external audiences. Good docs help new contributors get oriented and prevents knowledge from being lost.
Consider using project management integrations with GitHub like GitHub Projects to link tickets to projects and boards for a more unified workflow across tools. Third party project management apps provide additional capabilities for team collaboration, resource allocation tracking, and releases.
After completing the capstone, archive the project repository but do not delete it. This maintains the project work as a portfolio piece and resource for future reference while removing it from active development. Properly closing out projects provides closure and documents accomplishments at the conclusion of the academic experience.
Leveraging GitHub’s built-in collaboration features along with good branching strategies, testing practices, documentation and communication will enable students to effectively plan, track progress, coordinate work, and ship a quality capstone project on time and within specifications. Prioritizing project management serves students well in academic, professional and open source software development contexts.
Andrew Stroud