Our IT / infrastructure guy is going on vacation.  Left behind a cheat sheet for his backup to help him understand how best to assist our team with Git…  LOVED his notes as to how to help team members who approach with questions or challenges with using Git (distributed version control system, otherwise known as ‘let all of work on code together’).  Catch his last bullet and tell me that he doesn’t get how to motivate software developers…

“I broke Git again/I don’t understand Git/Tell me how to use Git/What is Git/Git? Is that like a potato?”
First, if they don’t seem to understand the fundamentals of Git, ask them if they’ve read Chapters 1-3 of the Git Book: http://git-scm.com/book

If they haven’t, make them read it before continuing. Git can be complex and if they don’t know the fundamentals you will have to hold their hand through everything, and they will likely end up breaking something.

We also have a Confluence page with a bunch of helpful Git links and examples: Git Resources

If they are still confused, feel free to question their man/womanhood. Just do it nicely.

This is all after a tutorial, a few guidance emails, instructions available on our wiki (Confluence instance)…  He’s done a great job bringing the team along in its transition from Subversion (a different version control system which has a different model) to Git.  So now “if they are still confused, feel free to question their man/womanhood.”  But “do it nicely”….