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start-as-experiment.md

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# Title
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Start as an Experiment
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# Problem
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An InnerSource initiative is considered but not started because management is
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unsure about its outcome and, as a result, is not willing to commit to an
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investment.
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# Context
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The majority of software development projects in the company are distributed
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globally. The company is considering to leverage InnerSource to make the
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required collaboration more efficient. However, most managers are not familiar
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with the Open Source working model and are instead accustomed to hierarchical,
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top-down control style management. The idea of InnerSource is very popular with
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software developers in the company, not the least because many developers use
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or are actively developing Open Source software.
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# Forces
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- Managers will want to validate the claims of improved collaboration through
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InnerSource before making a long term investment. This usually involves
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putting numbers against the expected improvements, which are hard to come
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by for InnerSource.
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- If the InnerSource initiative has a huge uptake among developers and if many
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projects come to rely on it, a decision to shut it down will be very
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unpopular and therefore hard to make.
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- When implementing new working models such as InnerSource which are radically
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different from working models previously practiced in the company, it is
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likely that existing, mandatory processes are no longer applicable and even
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that one has to operate in a regulatory, sometimes legal no-mans land.
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# Solution
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Declare the InnerSource initiative as a time limited experiment. Define and
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communicate the criteria for evaluating the experiment and ensure that
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sufficient data is gathered to perform the evaluation. Consider establishing
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a _Review Committee_ (**tbd**: pattern link) to increase the chances of
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management buy-in.
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# Resulting Context
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Managers are able to kick start InnerSource for the following reasons:
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- The experimental setup eases the need to management to scrutinize their
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numbers in the same way that they would for typical projects.
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- The possibility of failure of the experiment is understood and accepted. The
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personal risk for the supporting managers is minimized.
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- Even in case of a failure, the setup ensures that the company will learn from
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the experiment.
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- In case of success, the data gathered during the experiment will allow
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managers to make a longer lasting commitment to InnerSource.
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Participants in the InnerSource experiment are conscious of the fact that, as
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an experiment, the InnerSource initiative could be shut down or not continued
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after the planned lifetime in case the experiment does not yield the expected
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results.
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Finally, starting as an experiment makes it much easier to bend and adapt the
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existing processes and rules before you break them.
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# Known Instances
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- Robert Bosch GmbH
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# Author
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- Georg Grütter (Robert Bosch GmbH)
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# Status
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Draft Pattern
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# Acknowledgements
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- Jason Zink (Robert Bosch GmbH)
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- Diogo Fregonese (Robert Bosch GmbH)
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- Robert Hansel (Robert Bosch GmbH)
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- Hans Malte Kern (Robert Bosch GmbH)

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