Adopting GitHub Copilot at Scale

Scenario overview

Congratulations, you made the decision to adopt GitHub Copilot! But now what? Rolling out any technology to thousands of users can be a daunting task. After all, adopting GitHub Copilot doesn’t just mean a new tool, it means a new way of working.

A few key strategies can help you maximize the benefits from your investment in GitHub Copilot, leading to a more productive and fulfilled team.

Key design strategies and checklist

Create a plan that includes the weeks leading up to and weeks following your GitHub Copilot launch
Use multiple communication channels and repeat the message often
Attain executive sponsorship and support
Prepare for both instructor-led and on-demand GitHub Copilot enablement
Build an internal GitHub Copilot community
Measure GitHub Copilot adoption, activity, and impact
Continuously gather feedback and improve your GitHub Copilot program

Assumptions and preconditions

GitHub Enterprise Cloud (GHEC)
Either GitHub Copilot Enterprise or GitHub Copilot Business (GitHub Copilot plans)

Recommended deployment

Plan your GitHub Copilot launch

It’s important to plan your GitHub Copilot launch carefully. Ensure that your plan has a dedicated individual accountable for its execution and includes elements related to technical administration, learning & development, and communication.

An example GitHub Copilot launch plan should include the following minimum elements:

Pre-launch

Set up GitHub Copilot policies for your Enterprise and/or Organization(s)
Establish a user onboarding process that enables self-service access to GitHub Copilot to reduce manual overhead
Communicate the launch date of GitHub Copilot to your organization
Create a channel of communication for technical challenges and feedback
Define time-bound Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for GitHub Copilot adoption and activity metrics
Idenitfy a set of GitHub Copilot Champions to help drive adoption and provide feedback

Launch week (week 0)

Communicate the opportunity, benefits, and availability of GitHub Copilot to your organization
Provide on-demand training and resources for users to get started with GitHub Copilot

Post-launch (weeks 1-4)

Deploy an internal GitHub Copilot community (or “Expert Hub”) to share best practices, success stories, and helpful resources
Hold a series of instructor-led GitHub Copilot enablement sessions, including workshops, hackathons, and webinars
Send reminder emails, messages, and newsletters to encourage GitHub Copilot adoption

Post-launch (weeks 5-8)

Monitor GitHub Copilot adoption and activity metrics
Develop a GitHub Copilot reporting mechanism to track KPIs and derive meaningful insights about GitHub Copilot by using the Copilot Usage API and Copilot User Management API
Build on your GitHub Copilot Expert Hub with advanced training and resources specific to your organization
Gather feedback from users and iterate on your GitHub Copilot program

Communicate early and often

Communication is key to a successful GitHub Copilot rollout. Use multiple channels to communicate the benefits of GitHub Copilot to your organization, including email, chat, internal documentation forums, town halls, and newsletters. Repeat the message often to ensure that users are aware of the opportunity and benefits of GitHub Copilot.

Executive sponsorship

Driving GitHub Copilot adoption is most effective when backed with executive sponsorship and support. Engage with your organization’s leadership to secure their buy-in for your GitHub Copilot program. Executive sponsorship will help drive awareness, adoption, and accountability for GitHub Copilot usage across your organization.

Prepare instructor-led and on-demand GitHub Copilot enablement

Instructor-led training is invaluable as it allows users to ask questions and receive immediate feedback as they are learning about GitHub Copilot. Instructor-led training can be delivered through interactive workshops, guided hackathons, and large-format webinars.

However, it is impractical to expect every user across large organizations to be able to join a live session. On-demand resources, like internal documentation, training modules, and video tutorials, can help users get started with GitHub Copilot at their own pace.

GitHub offers many free resources to help users get started with GitHub Copilot:

To best prepare your existing team and future hires, consider offering a mix of instructor-led and on-demand Copilot enablement resources.

Build an internal GitHub Copilot community (or “Expert Hub”)

Building an internal GitHub Copilot community can help users share best practices, success stories, and helpful resources. An internal GitHub Copilot community can also help users connect with others who are using GitHub Copilot in similar ways, and can provide a forum for users to ask questions and share feedback.

A devoted GitHub repository or organization, along with GitHub native features like GitHub Discussions, can be used to denote answers to frequently asked questions, foster collaboration, and collect innovative ideas from your GitHub Copilot community.

Be sure to include other helpful resources for your GitHub Copilot community, such as:

Guidance on how to procure a GitHub Copilot license
On-demand training resources
GitHub Copilot documentation
A feedback channel to your GitHub administration team

Measure GitHub Copilot adoption, activity, and impact

At its core, GitHub Copilot saves users time while coding. In order for GitHub Copilot to drive downstream impacts, the time saved needs to be spent towards a business objective (e.g. improving velocity, improving quality, learning & development, etc.).

With that in mind, there is a series of cascading events that need to take place before those downstream impacts can be expected:

Adoption: First, users must be assigned a GitHub Copilot license. The list of individuals with a GitHub Copilot license can be gathered via the Copilot User Management API, or as a CSV export in the GitHub UI.
Activity: Next, users must install the GitHub Copilot IDE extension, authenticate to GitHub in their IDE, and accept suggestions. The number of GitHub Copilot suggestions and acceptances per day, per language, and per IDE, as well as interactions with Copilot Chat, can be gathered via the Copilot Usage API.
Time Savings: Finally, users must save time and spend that time productively within the same window that they would otherwise be coding. This can be gathered and analyzed via self-reported developer surveys.

If any of these events do not take place, GitHub Copilot will not drive downstream impacts for that user. For that reason, it is imperative that each of these metrics (Adoption, Activity, and Time Savings) are measured, and where this is a gap in expected results, feedback is gathered to resolve the gap.

Continuously gather feedback and improve your GitHub Copilot program

Use surveys, focus groups, and feedback channels to collect feedback from users about their GitHub Copilot experience. Analyze this feedback to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to maximize the benefits of GitHub Copilot for your organization.

Additional solution detail and trade-offs to consider

Assigning licenses

GitHub Copilot licenses can be assigned in a few different ways, each with their own benefits and trade-offs. You can assign licenses to:

All individuals in an organization
Specific individuals in an organization
Specific teams in an organization
Specific teams in an enterprise

While assigning licenses out of a single organization can simplify license management, it restricts the granularity of Copilot telemetry data from the Copilot Usage API endpoint for organizations. If you would like to track GitHub Copilot usage across your GitHub Organizations, consider assigning licenses to specific teams or individuals in those organizations.

ℹ️

When a user receives a seat from multiple organizations in the same enterprise, GitHub takes care of deduplicating these seats before billing for the user.

Automating license revocation

While automation can help manage costs associated with stale GitHub Copilot licenses, it can also lead to unintended consequences. For example, if licenses are revoked after a short window of inactivity, active users may be disrupted by their license revocation after spending some time on non-coding tasks. To avoid this, consider implementing a process that notifies users before their license is revoked, giving them time to renew it.

Seeking further assistance

GitHub Support

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GitHub Expert Services

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GitHub Partners

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GitHub Community

Join the GitHub Community Forum to ask questions, share knowledge, and connect with other GitHub users. It’s a great place to get advice and solutions from experienced users.