How to Build, Use, and Grow Internal Tools
summary
GitHub runs a mailbox of internal tools: a team status app for who’s working on what, Campfire chat rooms that post every commit and deployment, and a play music app that lets any staff (remote or HQ) control the office stream. Pull requests are used early and often — one refactor sparks the most-commented PR and still gets merged — and an ideas page averages about 35 new ideas a month with ~12 comments each. Boxen is open source for dev environment setup.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (12)
- 0:00Internal tools at GitHub
- 1:15Why internal tools solve pain
- 2:38Visibility into work
- 7:40Tools for remote teams
- 12:39Balancing communication and overload
- 19:03Feedback loops and strategy
- 23:19Choosing tools for pain points
- 29:19Understanding user pain
- 31:27Deciding internal tools
- 37:16Success rates of ideas
- 40:40Managing chat noise
- 43:06Open sourcing tools
related talks
19mThree points that promoted InnerSource activities
31mHow GitHub Uses GitHub to Build GitHub
45mHow Github uses GitHub to develop GitHub
39mUsing Github for more than code
25mManaging a GitHub Organization: Tools, Tips, and Best Practices
45mHow GitHub builds GitHub with GitHub
43mCode Review Tools
45mHow GitHub builds GitHub on GitHub