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Title

Creating an InnerSource Strategy

Patlet / Summary

Sometimes, it is difficult to convince people of the relevance of InnerSource for your organization and/or to get support from management. Creating an InnerSource strategy, that connects your InnerSource approach and activities to the goals and the overall strategy of your organization, can help in this regard.

Problem

  • Despite an organization has an InnerSource program, it is challenging to establish InnerSource in that organization
  • Missing management support and low awareness in some or many development teams are among the reasons
  • Potentially, the InnerSource program itself is missing clear goals and/or approaches how to achieve those.

Context

  • InnerSource is not an end in itself. It must deliver clear benefits to your organization and support its goals
  • If InnerSource and its benefits is mainly explained and positioned in a rather abstract way, it might be difficult to convince management and a critical mass of the development teams
  • People see InnerSource as a rather abstract methodology which does not really fit to their situation. They might say/think "InnerSource sounds great, but it is not relevant for our organization"
  • People struggle to make a connection between InnerSource and their goals/the goals of their organisation

Forces

TODO

Solutions

Create an InnerSource strategy. Such a document describes how the application of InnerSource relates to the goals and business strategy of your organization. It explains why InnerSource is important (not only in an abstract way but specifically to your organization), why you should leverage it, what goals your organization should have with respect to InnerSource, and what actions to perform to achieve those.

A high level table of contents of an InnerSource strategy document could look like so:

  • Executive summary
  • What InnerSource is
  • Why InnerSource is important for our organization
  • Current status of InnerSource in our organization
  • Target state
  • Recommended actions (to reach the target state)

Such a strategy is effective in persuading colleagues who might not have seen the value of InnerSource so far. Also discussions with management will be easier if you can draw clear connections between your goals and recommended activities to establish InnerSource and the goals and business strategy of your organization. It can be helpful to mention what other organizations (your peer organizations and/or competitors, for example) do with respect to InnerSource. The sections "target state" and "recommended actions" can be used as input and guardrails for the work of your InnerSource program.

If your organization has an approval process for strategy document, it is recommended to get an approval for your InnerSource strategy. Such a process can trigger discussions about InnerSource in your organization, raise awareness and make such a strategy document more "official".

Resulting Context

TODO

Known Instances

Status

Initial

Author(s)

  • Michael Picht

References

For discussions about this pattern idea please see this PR as well.