Collaborative workflow

Thank you for your interest using the collaborative workflow developed for FIMS. We would like to emphasize that all contributions are welcome and helpful. We hope to implement the GitHub motto,

collaboration without upfront coordination

such that all individuals wishing to contribute feel little barriers to doing so. See the Code of Conduct for information on our standards that we abide by while collaborating.

Lowndes et al. (2017) remind us that

engagement may best be approached as an evolution rather than as a revolution that may never come.

The crux of the workflow will be based on facilitating

1. goal setting and
2. quality control

(Balkundi and Harrison, 2006). Quality assurance will come from code reviews initiated by pull requests. Details provided in the workflow will help individuals communicate, document, and engage while collaborating, which will increase transparency and awareness while reducing the overhead needed for communication.

The highest priority is to develop a workflow outlining best practices for pull requests.

References

Lowndes et al. 2017

• code-centric communication attaches comments directly to code to increase awareness;
• public code and comments increases self-consciousness;
• exposure to other projects in GitHub increases learning opportunities;

Stan developer guidelines

An overview for developers of Stan.