Disclaimer

This text was originally posted on my personal LinkedIn account.

Book review

Last week, I had the opportunity to read an early access version of GitHub Foundations Certification Guide by Ayodeji Ayodele, which will soon be published by Packt. I’d like to share my impressions of the book and why I think it’s valuable for professionals working with GitHub.

Although the GitHub Foundations Certification is positioned as an entry-level credential for developers, platform engineers, IT operations/support engineers, and project/program managers, I believe the content of this book goes beyond that. GitHub is an ever-evolving platform, widely used by millions of developers and organizations, and it’s easy to overlook or underutilize some of its features. This book provides a structured, hands-on way to revisit the fundamentals and explore lesser-known capabilities, helping to close those knowledge gaps.

Some chapters I found particularly relevant include:

• Project management with GitHub: A clear walkthrough of how issues, labels, milestones, and projects can be combined to support effective project tracking and collaboration.
• GitHub Copilot: I haven’t used it extensively myself yet, but this section helped me get some insights on how integrated AI can boost developer productivity with generative assistance.
• Pull request workflows: An excellent introduction for anyone starting their open-source journey, with practical insights into collaboration.
• Repository management best practices: Covering topics such as branch naming conventions, branch protection rules (e.g., requiring conversation resolution before merges), merge strategies, and license selection. These are essential practices to foster collaboration, enhance security, and maintain a clean and organized codebase.
• CI/CD with GitHub Actions: One of my favorite topics. The book explains how to leverage GitHub Actions for automated builds, testing, formatting, security scanning, and deployment workflows, while also making use of the GitHub Marketplace to extend functionality. For those interested in DevOps and automation, this section alone is worth the read.

Overall, I found the book to be practical, accessible, and insightful. Whether you are preparing for the certification or simply looking to sharpen your GitHub skills, the examples and recommendations inside can help you become more effective on the platform.

Congratulations to Ayodeji Ayodele for authoring such a well-structured guide, and thanks to Vinishka Kalra from Packt for granting me early access.

And if you're interested, you can find the book at link.