Guides

Lead Developer Guide

As a Lead Developer at Open Sourcery, you're the technical heartbeat of your project and the bridge between Open Sourcery leadership and your dev team. Your success and your team's success go hand in hand. This guide covers everything you need to set up, run, and grow your project.

Your Role & Responsibilities

Within Open Sourcery, leadership sits at the top of the org, with Lead Devs reporting up to leadership, and Developers working under their Lead Dev.

Open Sourcery Leadership
Lead Developers (you)
Developers

As a Lead Dev, your responsibilities are to:

  • Lead the design of your project's technical architecture
  • Assign tasks to your developers at least once every two weeks
  • Mentor and unblock your devs
  • Maintain code quality
  • Communicate with Open Sourcery leadership

Getting Started: Setting Up Your Project

  1. 1Register on this website. We'll send you an invite to the Open Sourcery GitHub organization.
  2. 2Submit a project proposal. Navigate to Start a Project and fill out the details for your project. On our end, we'll approve your project and create its repository in our GitHub organization.

Once we create your repository:

  • Teammates can join your project through our project portal.
  • After accepting their invites, teammates should run git clone <repo_url>.git in their terminal to clone the project onto their system.
  • Create a GitHub Project in your repository. This becomes your team's Kanban board and sprint tracker.

Running Your Project

Your GitHub Project Board

Your project board should be your team's single source of truth; keep it updated during and between meetings. A typical board moves through these columns, left to right:

  1. 1. BacklogHasn't been started
  2. 2. ReadyReady to be picked up
  3. 3. In ProgressActively being worked on
  4. 4. In ReviewIn review
  5. 5. Done

Tip: Review your board at least once a week to make sure assignments and statuses are current.

Writing & Assigning Issues

Create issues from your repository's project board. Every issue should have:

  • A clear title
  • A scoped description
  • Acceptance criteria
  • Labels, such as "enhancement"/"bug," "good first issue," or "help wanted"
  • An assignee (you or another developer)

Optional: Tag an issue "help wanted" if you'd like to open it up for cross-team contribution. These automatically appear on Open Sourcery's org-wide issue tracker, so developers from other projects can pick them up too.

Communicating Tasks

  • Tell teammates about every task you assign them
  • Use your project's Discord channel for updates and clarifications
  • Mention teammates (@username) for faster collaboration

Sprints & Hack Sessions

Running a Sprint

  • Set scope at the start of the sprint (in Discord or during a hack session)
  • Hold frequent, ideally weekly, check-ins
  • Close the loop at the end with a demo or PR review

Hack Sessions

Hack sessions run regularly and give your team dedicated time to work on your project together. Use them to unblock teammates and ship features. You can simulate a real standup or keep things informal, whatever works best for your team.

Growing & Supporting Your Team

Onboarding New Developers

  • Get them a "good first issue" within their first week
  • Pair them with someone on the team
  • Make them feel needed fast

Keeping Members Engaged

  • Give ownership, not just tasks
  • Celebrate wins
  • Calibrate difficulty to each developer
  • Show the bigger picture: help your team see how their work fits into the project as a whole

Handling Drop-Off

  • Watch for silence
  • Check in 1:1 before assuming the worst
  • Redistribute their work gracefully
  • Document what they left behind

Passing the Torch

Document everything as you go. Good documentation keeps a project alive beyond any one person.

Staying Connected

Your Project's Discord Channel

Once your repository is created, your project automatically gets its own private Discord channel under the "Projects" category, named to match your project, with you already in it. Developers are added to it when they join your project and removed if they leave, so there's nothing to set up or maintain.

Points of Contact

  • Email: umdopensourcery@gmail.com - reach out anytime with questions. You'll also get automatic emails when new members join your project.
  • Discord:
    • #questions - quick, general questions
    • #all-lead-devs - discussion with other Lead Devs
    • #all-devs - discussion with developers across Open Sourcery
    • Your project's own channel - for discussion with your team

What your Developers should know: joining and contributing to a project.

Read the Developer Guide