How to run a project

[olizilla]

At the start of a project:

Work on a design

• Arrange a kick off meeting with at least 1 other dev of your choosing.
• Gather all the info and designs from the client and lay it out on a table
• Draw boxes and makes lists until you have a clear vision of what you are gonna build
• That includes describing the shape of the entities/objects that each app will operate on.
• Where possible break it up into a collection of simple apps, rather than one complex one.
• Write up the plan as a README in a repo.
• Present the idea to another developer as a sanity check.

Create milestones

• Break the project down into small (like, tiny) milestones.
• A milestone should leave you with some demonstrable improvement to the system.
• Put a estimate in days on each milestone.
• Add in contingency of about 50%
• Yes, your estimates are that bad.

If the project gets the go-ahead

• Create issues on the repo for major chunks of work, labeled as enhancement
• Create milestones and assign issues to them.
• Create PRs that contain changes for a specific issue, and only one issue at a time.
• Get someone to review the PR. Shout at them, take them out to dinner, whatever works.
• In the meantime, merge the PR if you need it to continue. If you can work on an unrelated issue and leave the PR open then do.
• Demo your milestones as you hit them. Everyone loves a demo.