GitHub, in plain English

GitHub is the place where teams plan, build, secure, and ship software together. It’s a single, collaborative platform that brings your code, your people, and your processes into one home. From first line of code to production, GitHub helps you move faster, stay secure, and work transparently—whether you’re a solo dev or running an enterprise-scale engineering org.

Why it matters to your Back Office

• One source of truth for software work: Code, reviews, discussions, decisions, and runbooks live together, making audits and handoffs simpler.

• Clear governance and compliance: Branch protections, required reviews, CODEOWNERS, signed commits, and org-wide policies keep changes controlled and accountable.

• Risk management by default: Built‑in secret scanning, dependency alerts, Dependabot, and code scanning (with CodeQL) reduce vulnerabilities before they reach production.

• Automated guardrails: With GitHub Actions, you can codify policies, checks, and deployments so the “right way” is the easiest way.

• Operational visibility: Pull request metrics, review activity, and audit logs give leadership traceability and reporting without extra spreadsheets.

• Scale and cost control: Reusable workflows, environment protections, concurrency limits, and usage policies keep CI/CD and dev environment spend predictable.

• Smoother onboarding: Templates, starter repos, team-based permissions, and organization-wide standards help new hires become productive in days, not weeks.

What you can do on day one

• Manage code together with Git, branches, pull requests, and reviews that make collaboration natural.

• Track work with Issues and Projects (boards and roadmaps) so planning and delivery stay connected.

• Automate builds, tests, and releases using GitHub Actions—run pipelines on every commit or on a schedule.

• Harden your software supply chain with dependency insights and automated security updates.

• Spin up cloud dev environments using Codespaces for consistent, secure, ready‑to‑code setups in minutes.

AI that speeds you up (GitHub Copilot)

• Write, refactor, and explain code with AI suggestions in your editor and on GitHub.

• Generate tests, docs, and boilerplate to cut repetitive work and keep quality high.

• Answer “how do we…?” in context with chat that understands your codebase and policies.

• Suggest fixes for certain security findings, helping teams close gaps faster and more confidently.

Security and compliance built in

• Secret scanning across repos and pull requests to catch credentials early.

• Code scanning with CodeQL to identify vulnerabilities in application code.

• Dependency review and alerts so changes that add risk are flagged before merging.

• Branch protection and required reviewers to enforce process and separation of duties.

• Audit logs, SSO/SAML, and SCIM for identity, access, and traceability at scale.

• Environment rules and approvals to control who can deploy, where, and when.

Collaboration toolkit your teams will actually use

• Issues, Projects, and Discussions keep conversations and decisions close to the work.

• Pull requests with suggested changes make feedback quick and concrete.

• Templates (issues/PRs) and labels standardize quality across teams.

• CODEOWNERS and merge queues streamline reviews and keep main branches healthy.

• Wikis and README-first docs turn repos into living runbooks and knowledge bases.

Cloud development with Codespaces

• Standardized, secure dev containers so every engineer has the same setup—no “works on my machine.”

• Start coding in seconds in the browser or your editor, with policies for networking and secrets.

• Cost controls and lifecycle rules to pause, shut down, and right-size environments automatically.

• Great for onboarding and spikes with ephemeral environments that are easy to create and discard.

Deploy and operate with confidence

• Actions runners (hosted or self-hosted) for flexible, scalable CI/CD.

• Releases, packages, and container registries to version, store, and ship artifacts.

• Environment‑specific secrets and protections so production stays locked down.

• Observability handoffs via artifacts, logs, and status checks baked into the dev workflow.

Enterprise at scale

• Organizations and teams to model your structure and delegate permissions safely.

• Central policies and reusable workflows to keep standards consistent across hundreds of repos.

• Enterprise Cloud or self‑hosted Enterprise Server options to meet your operational needs.

• Global collaboration with guardrails that meet the expectations of IT, Security, and Finance.

How GitHub fits into your stack

• Works with your tools: chat, incident response, cloud providers, test suites, and deployment targets.

• APIs and webhooks (REST and GraphQL) so you can automate everything from user provisioning to reporting.

• Marketplace actions and apps to plug in security scanners, QA, code quality, and more without custom glue.

Quick ROI highlights

• Faster onboarding through consistent environments and templates.

• Fewer defects thanks to automated checks and security scanning.

• Shorter lead times with CI/CD and clear review paths.

• Less context switching because planning, coding, security, and shipping live in one place.

Getting started

• Create your organization and enable SSO; set teams and base permissions.

• Turn on branch protection, CODEOWNERS, and required reviews for critical repos.

• Adopt Actions with a small pipeline first; then standardize with reusable workflows.

• Enable security features (secret scanning, dependency alerts, code scanning) org‑wide.

• Pilot Copilot with a focused team; measure merge time, review load, and defect rates.

• Roll out Codespaces for new hires and high-churn projects to cut setup time.

In short: GitHub pulls your engineering and back-office needs into one safer, faster, more accountable platform—so teams can build confidently and the business can trust the process.