How We Work With GitHub & Smartsheet
Working With GitHub & Smartsheet
Learn about the workflow for how we structure and align GitHub & Smartsheet within a custom project’s lifecycle.
Strategy & Implementation Phase Specifics
For New Hires
Here are presentations offering a high-level overview of the information in this section.
The Best of Friends: Smartsheets & Github
What We Support
Learn about what we support and any applicable guidelines.
How Our Environment’s Set Up
Curious about how Dev environments fit together? Learn how Sandboxes, I.D. Core, Deploys, and Staging and Production connect to power BU’s websites.
GitHub
GitHub is the service we use to host, manage, and version control our code. GitHub’s Projects feature is used by a projects implementation project team members[Mainly ACDs, Designers, and Developers] to define business requirements and align technical requirements, features, and prioritized tasks. GitHub issues are where they should be having discussions and documenting decisions made as a team.
Understanding how Interactive Design uses GitHub streamlines our project workflows, ensuring efficient client service. See the Workflow page for details on the steps and timing of creating issues, finalizing requirements in issues[etc.].
GitHub Terms
GitHub Processes & Policies
- GitHub Repository Set Up & Configuration
- Setting Up GitHub Issues
- Adding Milestones & GitHub Project
- GitHub Workflow & Responsibilities
Smartsheet
For high level planning, Smartsheet is our overall go-to for implementation, collaboration and workflow tracking to ensure budgets and timelines are successfully met.
Smartsheet & Management Terms
Smartsheet Processes & Policies
Time Tracking
Please make sure your assigned work is being consistently and accurately tracked.
Key Reminders
- Be sure to understand our ActiveCollab time-tracking policies before reading ahead.
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All assigned work that moves the project forward should be tracked—even if it’s research and concepting or trying to get a development aspect to work. For full time designers and developers, 100% resourcing 25 billable hours of your work week — or 5 hours a day or more.
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Project meetings are billable, unless they’re for planning/estimating only.
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Track all communication (Slack, email, meetings) under “Communication – Internal/External.” Ask: Did it move the project forward? If yes, it’s billable.
Tips + Updates
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Ask your PM or post in #ask-timetracking if you’re unsure.
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We’re alwaysupdating templates and documentation to clarify what goes where.
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Outlook reminders and 1:1 check-ins may be used to improve tracking habits.
Time tracking isn’t fun—but it’s essential. Questions? Just ask!
Be Advised
Incorrect time tracking can lead to decisions based on inaccurate data, affecting future task time allocation.
- Track your time daily for the current week to avoid the complexities and downstream effects on projects of retroactive adjustments.
- If you change billable time, but need to change it following a billing integration: please reach out to the project’s Project Manager to let them know ASAP.
- Billing integrations run at 9:30am, 12:30pm, 3:30pm, and 6:30pm daily.
- PMs run weekly burn rate reports and compare them to your
%completeentries in Smartsheet to assess if we’re on track and if the budget is on target.
Note: The time spent in Github creating and managing issues is non-billable regardless of phase.
Downtime
There are two way to track Downtime, which has been included as two tasks within our ID Admin project in ActiveCollab:
- Downtime – No Available Work: Use only if you’ve exhausted all options, such as:
- You have nothing to move forward with,
- You’ve offered help to others finish pull requests, ServiceNow tickets,
- You’ve asked for more work, or to be assigned any remaining ServiceNow tickets from Jon Brousseau or Kristen.
- Downtime — System Related: only to be used for tech issues, such as application outages or internet issues.