The organization and support of the code have always been of high criticality. What has changed over time is how they are handled.

Nowadays there are more tools to manage the digital files of any project. The tendency aims for an iterative life cycle where the software creation is based on components, which are increasing after every sprint until they are delivered, and after that, they have maintenance. Software maintenance requires multiple work products and human resources that, based on them, apply the best practices to provide support and possible growth. The software development companies or even providers of digital products have seen over time the need to keep control over their code and files through repositories.

A way to avoid problems in the iterative process code is the use of repositories. These resolve problems such as.

If an organization does not have control or a strategy to support the code, it will have a risk among the team members involved.


In software, it is a digital container where the code or files are deposited and stored. Google Drive, Dropbox, iDrive, and others could well be a repository, but they lack tracking. In the past, it was common to carry out a version strategy where companies created an executable that they stored in computers to keep track where possible, and in some cases, they had documented the features offered by each version. Then, they are subsequently hosted on a server for deployment, using FTP for example, depending on each technology. Today's code deployments are very different from what was considered at that time. If you still have a practice of arriving with a client to their machine with a USB and waiting to pass the files to update the software, it is time to continue reading and thinking about best practices.

There is something important to highlight, "best" has to be along with a quantitative metric that determines in what aspect it is if it is not merely an opinion, and that is it. Most developers today are familiar with the term Git. Since 2005, this open-source software has been offered for version control that allows the maintenance of applications regardless of the number of code files they bring with them. (And it's not just coding files.)

Git offers this centralized system that directly impacts the business where it offers multiple benefits such as

 The ability to use branches makes it easy to manage the code by features, modules, and epics. These are used based on the methodology or model that the development team decided to work on.


Figure 1 shows how a branch can start from a node to create features to not interfere with the current operation.

The subsequent integration depends on the test procedures to validate the work. This way to handle a project allows the management of test, development, and production environments, among others, depending again on the type of management carried out by the development team.

Regardless of the number of members of a team. They can carry different flows to compliment the end. The use of Git allows developers to obtain from the branch they want the latest update of the contributions of their peers, hence the importance of having different environments. Using commits, the contributions are added. These contributions are local to the developers until they upload the code to a place where it will be hosted. This practice avoids any stopper.

 A Git command to make a code merge request to complement a feature of the project (regularly). Depending on the rules, its integration could be possible for manual or automatic techniques for code review to decide if it is convenient to do the integration. This action can lead to the execution of unit tests or other mechanisms.

 It is working simultaneously on a project without worrying about having the latest version of code available, making only the necessary changes, and getting deployments more frequently, creating a form (with its qualities) for each team.

Git is no stranger to other areas such as marketing, administration, design, and content management. All the benefits are related to the version control strategy that the team is using.

You may have heard about Github, Bitbucket, and GitLab, which are expressed as places where the project files are hosted based on the Git version control system. This service helps to store the code either publicly or privately. The service may be free or paid, some complementary to task management boards such as Azure or Jira.

Working with Git connected to a repository such as Github is possible from the computer terminal to a graphical environment such as the Github interface on a project.

Clients like Github allow code collaboration and version control. However, other providers graphically offer source code management as Gitkraken might offer.

As mentioned before, branches generate a history tree to divide the project into different versions. A graphical environment option is Gitkraken to facilitate its appreciation, providing benefits such as.

Improve the user experience by making interactions intuitive and easy for new users who are just learning the concepts or are unfamiliar with code instructions.

It is faster as it reduces interactions and condenses complicated processes into simple actions from a drag and drop that allows code joining, restoring, or uploading a contribution in a few clicks.

Gitkraken offers complementary features such as a task management dashboard, as well as easy integration with a Github account.

I invite you to give yourself the opportunity. If you do not currently work with repositories to get into its use. Not only to offer "the best practices", but for quality reasons. International quality standards, which endorse the practices carried out by the teams to offer a product on time, within the form, budget, and meeting the scope, consider this type of tool as necessary and valuable for project management. The project repository must host and control its versions according to the version control strategy for its possible backups. These tools are not self-managed, but you can create the workflows to reduce the time and cost, avoiding pain.


Try something new https://www.gitkraken.com/invite/s12KsQYE

Recent Posts