11 Building a community

Imagine you’ve just created another valuable software package and can’t wait to share it with the world. You make the repository publicly available on GitHub, and you send out a blast of tweets and emails to everyone who might be interested. You sit back and wait for the hype to build, but it never comes. Although you’ve reached a milestone by completing the implementation of your project, it turns out this is rarely the final milestone. If you want people to use your work, and especially if you want them to contribute new features, bug fixes, or documentation, you need to provide guidance and vision for the project so everyone can head in the same direction together. This is a lot like building a product.

11.1 Your README needs to make a value proposition

11.2 Provide supporting documentation for different user types

11.3 Establish, provide, and enforce a code of conduct

11.4 Conveying the project’s road map, status, and changes

11.4.1 Using GitHub projects for kanban management

11.4.2 Use GitHub labels to track status for individual tasks

11.4.3 Track high-level changes in a log

11.5 Gather consistent information with issue templates

11.6 Go forth

Summary