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Fostering a culture of collaboration
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Ben Balter
December 15, 2017
Technology
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Fostering a culture of collaboration
Ben Balter
December 15, 2017
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Transcript
Fostering a culture of collaboration Ben Balter @benbalter ben.balter.com
[email protected]
Roadmap • Open source (in the enterprise) • Best practices
(internal, external) • Community building (internal, external)
Open source in the enterprise
The open source maturity model • Consuming - Using open
source software • Releasing - Creating a new open source project • Contributing - Contributing to upstream projects • Embracing - Strategically participating in open source
Conway's law “organizations which design systems ... are constrained to
produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations ”
How you work is as important as What you work
on
How closed source projects can work like open source projects
Open source ≠ Published source
Open source is a philosophy Not a type of software
Process is shared to the widest extent practical One team
— your organization — the entire world
Open Source (software) software that can be freely used, modified,
and shared (in both modified and unmodified form) by anyone
Open Source a philosophy of collaboration in which working materials
are made available for others to fork, modify, discuss, and contribute to.
Adopting open source Code & process
Friction (n) - the time it takes to go from
"I want to contribute" to "I have"
Open source best practices
Inside the firewall
1. The technology is the easy part
2. Start small, go through the motions
3. Minimize information imbalance procedurally — day-to-day — long term
4. Embrace the constraints of open source Electronic — Available
— Asynchronous — Informal
5. Open source problems, not solutions
Outside the firewall
1. Expand your definition of stakeholders (Potential) users — (Potential)
contributors — Subject matter experts
2. Be the hub, encourage spokes
3. Minimize contributor friction
4. Decentralize governance Community management — Code review — Leadership
5. Encourage contributions In advance — day-to-day — going forward
Open source community building
1. Make open source an explicit expectation Open source Fridays
— Hack Weeks — upstream improvements
2. Solve a shared problem
3. Link to the repository from your project’s distribution channel
Topics — Good first issues — Help wanted
4. Add community documentation Common license — CONTRIBUTING — Community
Profile
5. Publish technical documentation Marketing docs — End-user docs —
Technical docs
6. Document how to contribute (And that you want contributions)
7. Clarify support vs. development SUPPORT file — troubleshooting/FAQ —
dedicated channels
8. Welcome new contributors Hand holding — Saved replies —
Linking to other issues
9. Set up automated tests (CI) To provide instant feedback
without human intervention
10. Enforce code standards (and community standards too)
Bonus: Automate (or outsource) community management Probot — Adoption —
Archived repositories
Resources • Open source guide: opensource.guide • FOSS Maturity model:
github.com/github/maturity-model • Best practices - Internal: bit.ly/5bpos-internal • Best practices - External: bit.ly/5bpos-external • Best practices - Community: bit.ly/foss-community • Contributing template: github.com/nayafia/contributing-template
These slides: http://bit.ly/foss-innovation-culture
Fostering a culture of collaboration Ben Balter @benbalter ben.balter.com
[email protected]