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Title

Trusted Committer and Contributor Retrospectives

Patlet

A host team working with contributors outside of their own line of management constantly runs into misunderstandings. As a result collaboration becomes brittle and frustrating. Setting aside time for regular retrospectives for the InnerSource team consisting of trusted committers and contributors can help make communication smooth.

Problem

For long running collaborations friction between host team and collaborators is substantially reducing focus and energy for everyone involved. Willingness to continue the collaboration is shrinking.

Context

A host team of trusted committers has started a long running collaboration with a group of contributors.

  • Over time the number of misunderstandings grows.
  • People may run into mis-communication.
  • Teams may discover slight differences in development culture.
  • Team members may discover that assumptions they made about how the other team works are false.
  • Contribution processes may not be entirely clear and workable for everyone involved.

Forces

  • Participants are inclined to take "written over verbal" as "only written".
  • Trusted committers are all part of the same team.
  • There is a group of contributors all coming from the same team.
  • As a result trusted committers know each other well and understand constraints, prioritization side effects and team dynamics without ever sharing them with contributors.
  • Also contributors form a well knit group.
  • The contribution process is seen as transient and temporary. As a result little is invested in forming a shared team of trusted committers and contributors.
  • There is no clear path from contributor to becoming trusted committer - other than becoming a member of the host team.

Solution

Bring host team and contributors together:

  • As a first step it can help to share a meal together and get to know each other.
  • For collaborations running over several weeks establish a monthly retrospective meeting that involves everyone who is needed for a successful contribution.
  • Make sure that action items for each restrospective are being followed up upon, ideally check these action items at the beginning of the next retrospective.
  • Keep the agenda of retrospectives stable and predictable: It's already uncomfortable enough to name and resolve collaboration issues.

Example agenda:

  • 5 minute check-in so everyone can test their audio setup, silly questions preferred so people can laugh together, reducing overall stress.
  • 5 minute review for action items from last meeting (each item presented by its owner)
  • 10 minutes to gather strengths and weaknesses of the past collaboration time period. Do this as a combination of writing (sticky notes on a digital white board) and verbally explaining the stickies to make sure introverts get involved as well.
  • 2 minutes to put dots against weaknesses that should be addressed in the next cycle. Pick the top 1-2 weaknesses.
  • 10 minutes to gather potential remedy actions to address the picked weaknesses. Again use time for writing sticky notes to involve everyone.
  • 2 minutes to put dots against action items (each participant may add 2-3 dots), pick at most top 3 items, assign each item two owners - one trusted committers and one contributor.
  • 5 minutes for checkout so everyone can wind down and leave feedback on the meeting.

Caveat: In particular for cases where people have tried to collaborate for a long time already, the initial meeting may need more than 30 minutes.

Resulting Context

  • Trusted committers understand how to improve communication and contribution processes.
  • Contributors understand how to support trusted committers in improving documentation and processes.
  • Likely both uncover issues that are beyond their direct control but also see ways to address these in the organisation adopting InnerSource.
  • Ideally several learnings can be shared with other InnerSource teams so they avoid running into the same trouble.
  • When done regularly after a handful of retrospectives collaboration improves, issues uncovered reduce, turning the session more and more into a lot of positive feedback. As a result motivation on both sides increases.
  • Communication Tooling and Base Documentation improves.

Related material

Known Instances

  • Europace AG

Status

Initial