Case 2: A Team Overwriting Each Other's Scripts

Last updated on 2026-10-23 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • How can a team work on the same scripts and documents without losing changes?
  • What does it take to introduce version control in a research group?

Objectives

  • Explain the difference between file sharing, file naming conventions and version control.
  • Recommend a setup that fits the team’s skills and the institution’s infrastructure.
Callout

Scarytale: The good old script

Who was Svenja?

Play it as a yes/no guessing game, then read the solution: Das gute alte Skript (a group wants to publish collate_samples_SvenjaMax.py, but nobody knows who wrote which part, and the script has no licence).

Source: Research Data Scarytales, Kompetenznetzwerk Forschungsdatenmanagement Thüringen, CC0.

The case

A research group of five people analyses its data with R and Python scripts. The scripts are stored in a shared cloud folder. Several times, someone has overwritten a colleague’s changes, and nobody knows which version produced the figures in the last paper. The group leader asks what they should do.

Challenge

What would you recommend?

In small groups, discuss for 15 minutes:

  1. What exactly is the problem? What does the team need?
  2. Which tools or practices could help? What would the team have to learn?
  3. What would you recommend first, and where would you refer them?

Tools in this case

Tool or practice Good for What the team needs to learn Infrastructure
File naming and folder conventions small teams, first step agreeing on rules none
Git tracking changes, reproducibility Git basics local installation
GitLab, Codeberg, GitHub collaboration, review, issues web interface, merge requests institutional GitLab or external platform

A small first step

Before introducing version control, the team can agree on file naming rules and a folder structure. A good starting point is the poster File Naming Best Practices for Researchers: “No more final_final_really” by Avinash Gupta (CC BY 4.0), created as a project of the certificate course Research Data Management.

Where to learn more

Key Points
  • Shared folders do not keep track of who changed what and why.
  • Version control needs a small learning investment but makes results traceable.
  • Check which Git platform the institution offers before recommending one.