What GitHub Gives You for Free
| Feature | How You’d Use It |
|---|---|
| Rendered markdown | BRD, user stories, ADRs all display beautifully |
| Issues | Stakeholders raise questions or change requests |
| Pull Requests | You propose requirement changes, stakeholders comment before approval |
| Discussions | Longer form conversations about features |
| Wiki | Optional cleaner frontend if you want separate requirements from build documentation |
| Notifications | Stakeholders get emailed when docs change |
GitHub for a Microsoft Teams Organisation
GitHub may sound like a developer tool with no relevance to day-to-day charity operations — but at a high level, they solve similar problems. The table below maps familiar Teams concepts to their GitHub equivalents.
| What you do in Microsoft Teams | GitHub equivalent | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Store files in a Team’s document library | Repository (repo) | The central store for everything — code, docs, requirements |
| Organise files into folders | Folders within the repo | Same idea, same structure |
| Edit a Word doc and save a new version | Commit | Every saved change is logged with who made it and why |
| See version history on a file | Commit history | Full record of every change, reversible at any time |
| Create a new folder for a new project phase | Branch | A safe space to work on something new without affecting the main version |
| Merge two versions of a document | Pull request / merge | Proposed changes reviewed and accepted before they become official |
| Team Wiki or OneNote notebook | GitHub Wiki | Documentation, decisions, and reference material |
| Planner board (tasks and cards) | GitHub Issues + Project board | Requirements, user stories, bugs, and tasks all live here |
| Comment on a document | Comment on an issue or pull request | Discussion tied directly to the relevant requirement or change |
| @mention a colleague | @mention in GitHub | Notifies the right person in context |
| Shared channel with an external partner | Outside collaborator access | Controlled access for volunteers or contractors without full membership |
The practical upshot: requirements documents, user stories, and decision records will live in GitHub — the same way they might live in a Teams document library — but with a full audit trail, structured task tracking, and a direct link to the code being built against them. For LCC staff, the day-to-day touchpoint will mainly be reading documents and commenting on issues, which requires no technical knowledge.
Local to me
G:\cycle-buddies ← working copy (Obsidian on laptop)
↓ push
/DATA/Documents/GitHub/cycle-buddies.git ← home server (deploy + run)
↓ mirror
github.com/lcc/cycle-buddies ← stakeholder facing. (not live yet)
git push origin main && git push github main