pattern/dedicated-community-leader

Merge pull request #21 from paypal/pattern/dedicated-community-leader

Author: Nick Yeates

dedicated-community-leader.md

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+## Title
+
+_Dedicated Community Leader_
+
+## Problem
+
+When starting an InnerSource initiative it is crucial to nominate the right people to lead the communities. Selecting the wrong persons and/or not providing enough capacity for them risks wasted effort and ultimatively the failure of the InnerSource initiative.
+
+Consider the following story. Company A wants to initiate an InnerSource initiative in order to foster collaboration across organisational boundaries. They have decided to start with an experimental phase with limited scope. Management has selected a suitable pilot topic for the first InnerSource community and expects contributions from many business units across the organisation. Company A has nominated a new hire to head the community for 50 % of his work time, because he was not yet 100 % planned for. After 6 months, the community has received only a few contributions, most of which are from a single business unit. Company A replaces the community leader with someone who has a longer history in the company, this time for only 30 % of his time. After another 6 months, the number of contributions has picked up only  marginally. Company A is no longer convinced that InnerSource helps to achieve their goal of increased, cross divisional collaboration and abandons InnerSource. 
+
+**Review Comments**
+- (**Done**) add summary about underlying core problem present in this story at the beginning (possibly boldfaced)
+- (**Done**) add _kicker statement_ after summary to get people interested in the contents (something like a rationale, outcome. Example: "avoid wasted effort on InnerSource"). 
+- (**Done**) add information about initial scope of InnerSource initiative (start small)
+
+## Context
+
+- Company A is a large and old company. It has no prior experience in Open Source or other, community based working models. The company culture is best characterized as a classical top down management style - it is generally at odds with community culture.
+- While there are supporters and a sponsor in top level management, middle management in company A is not yet sold on InnerSource.
+- Management has provided a limited budget to fund a part time community leader, only.
+- The initially selected community leader has little or no prior experience with the Open Source working model.
+- The initially selected developer community leader does not have an extensive network within the company.
+
+**Review Comments**
+- (**Done**) clarify who actually bought in to which extent
+- (**Done**) clarify how many resources are available to the InnerSource effort (marketing, capacity)
+- (**Done**) add to first context bullet point: traditional companies might not have the right culture for communities to form naturally without much external stimulation and support.
+- (**Done**) clarify size of company
+
+## Forces
+
+If a company does not significantly invest in the initial InnerSource community in terms of budget and capacity for InnerSource, the credibility of its committment to InnerSource might be perceived as questionable. A common impulse of a company with a traditional management culture to a project or initiative not performing as expected will be to replace its leader. Doing that without involving the community and following meritocratic principles will further undermine the companies committment to InnerSource by highlighting the friction between the current company culture and a the target culture - a community culture.
+
+The value contribution of InnerSource projects will not be obvious for many managers which are steeped in traditional project management methods. Those managers are less likely to assign one of their top people, who are usually in high demand by non InnerSource-projects, to an InnerSource project for a significant percentage of their work time.
+
+Community work - especially communication - make up for a significant percentage of a community leaders daily work. At the same time, he will likely also have to spearhead the initial development, too. In the face of limited capacity, inexperienced leaders will tend to focus on development and neglect communication. The barrier for potential contributors to make their first contribution and to commit to the community will be much higher if the community leader is hard to reach or is slow to respond to feedback and questions for lack of time. Furthermore, technically inexperienced leaders will most likely have a harder time to attract and retain highly experienced contributors than a top performer with a high degree of visibility within a company would have. 
+
+If a community can not grow fast enough and pick up enough speed, chances are they won't be able to convincingly demonstrate the potential of InnerSource.
+
+**Review comments**
+- (**Done**) managers won't commit experienced developers as a community leader if they are not yet sold on InnerSource and as long as there are other, important projects 
+- (**Done**) state forces in a way that clarifies how they make the problem harder. Think constraints.
+- (**Open**: I have added something to the problem statement instead) now added that to the maybe reference pattern tbd (start small, experiment then scale up as it has proven successful)
+- (**Done**) clarify role and influence of companies cultural fit for InnerSource 
+
+## Solution
+
+Select a community leader who 
+- is experienced in the Open Source working model or similar community based working models, 
+- has the required soft-skills to act as a natural leader,
+- is an excellent networker and who
+- inspires community members.
+Empower the community leader to dedicate 100 % of his time to community work including communication and development. 
+
+**Review comments**
+- (**Done**) important point is that community leader is excellent networker - not necessarily already networked
+
+## Resulting Context
+
+A community leader with the properties described above will lend a face and embody the companies commitment to InnerSource. It will make it more likely that other associates in his network will follow his lead and contribute to InnerSource. Over time, he will be able to build up a stable core team of developers and hence increase the chances of success for the InnerSource project. By convincingly a large enough audience within his company of the potential of InnerSource, he will make an important contribution to changing the company culture towards a community culture. 
+
+Having excellent and dedicated community leaders is a precondition for the success of InnerSource. It is, however, not a silver bullet. There are many challenges of InnerSource which are above and beyond what a community leader can tackle, such as budgetary, legal, fiscal or other organizational challenges.
+
+
+**Review comments**
+- (**Done**) maybe add something along the lines of gradually changing the culture of the company and what that culture would look like. 
+- (**Done**) don't make it sound like a silver bullet/magical solution. Other problems are not necessarily addressed by having a great community leader.
+- (**Done**) what are the problems that having a great community leader may not directly address? What else do you need?
+
+## Known Instances
+
+_BIOS at Robert Bosch GmbH_. Note that InnerSource at Bosch was, for the majority, aimed at increasing innovation and to a large degree dealt with internal facing products. This pattern is currently not used at Bosch for lack of funding.
+
+**Review comment**
+- (**Done**) clarify that we started small and were declared an experiment - scaled up only after initial successes
+
+## Status
+
+_Reviewed Pattern_
+
+## Authors
+
+- Georg Grütter (Robert Bosch GmbH)
+- Diogo Fregonese (Robert Bosch GmbH)
+
+## Acknowledgements
+
+- Tim Yao
+- Padma Sudarsan
+- Nigel Green
+
+## Changelog
+
+- **2016-11-06** - first review