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Copy file name to clipboardExpand all lines: dedicated-community-leader.md
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## Problem
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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.
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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 ultimately the failure of the InnerSource initiative.
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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.
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Consider the following story. Company A wants to initiate an InnerSource initiative in order to foster collaboration across organizational 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 organization. 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.
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**Review Comments**
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- (**Done**) add summary about underlying core problem present in this story at the beginning (possibly boldfaced)
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## Forces
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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.
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If a company does not significantly invest in the initial InnerSource community in terms of budget and capacity for InnerSource, the credibility of its commitment 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 commitment to InnerSource by highlighting the friction between the current company culture and the target culture - a community culture.
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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.
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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.
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**Review comments**
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- (**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
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- (**Done**) state forces in a way that clarifies how they make the problem harder. Think constraints.
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- (**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)
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- (**Done**) clarify role and influence of companies cultural fit for InnerSource
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## Solution
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Select a community leader who
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Select a community leader who:
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- is experienced in the Open Source working model or similar community based working models,
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- has the required soft-skills to act as a natural leader,
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- is an excellent networker and who
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- inspires community members.
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Empower the community leader to dedicate 100 % of his time to community work including communication and development.
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**Review comments**
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- (**Done**) important point is that community leader is excellent networker - not necessarily already networked
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Empower the community leader to dedicate 100 % of his time to community work including communication and development.
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## Resulting Context
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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.
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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.
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**Review comments**
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- (**Done**) maybe add something along the lines of gradually changing the culture of the company and what that culture would look like.
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- (**Done**) don't make it sound like a silver bullet/magical solution. Other problems are not necessarily addressed by having a great community leader.
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- (**Done**) what are the problems that having a great community leader may not directly address? What else do you need?
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## Known Instances
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_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.
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**Review comment**
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- (**Done**) clarify that we started small and were declared an experiment - scaled up only after initial successes
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