New Pattern: Core Team

patterns/2-structured/core-team.md

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+## Title
+
+Core Team
+
+## Patlet
+
+Even when an InnerSource project is widely needed, contributions and usage may be hindered because the project is difficult to work with.
+Establish a core team that is dedicated to take care of the project's fundamental items.
+Their work enables contributors to add and use the features that provide value to their scenarios.
+
+## Problem
+
+* It is difficult to contribute to the project.
+This could be due to things like:
+  * Can't run the project locally.
+  * Poor documentation.
+  * Convoluted code.
+  * Inadequate testing.
+* It is difficult to use the project.
+Some possible causes:
+  * Poor documentation (again).
+  * Frequent bugs.
+  * Unintuitive setup.
+
+## Story
+
+There's a central project that everyone depends on.
+What a great candidate for InnerSource!
+Unfortunately, the project has grown organically, with various contributions and additions slapped on haphazardly.
+Now it's an icky, thick morass of code that no one understands and everyone is afraid to touch.
+It's clearly due for an overhaul (e.g. refactoring, testing, documentation, etc.), but even though everyone needs and wants that work to happen, no one takes the time to do it.
+
+## Context
+
+* Many teams need the project.
+* The project has significant tech debt.
+* Slow adoption and iteration on the project.
+* There is not a owner or maintainer who takes reponsibility for the project and contribution ecosystem as a whole.
+
+## Forces
+
+* Every contributing team is busy, and therefore prioritizes work that results in an immediate payoff for themselves.
+* As the project grows the natural trend is for it to become more difficult to use and to modify.
+
+## Solution
+
+Form a core team whose job it is to maintain this project in a state so that others can easily onboard and contribute to it.
+This core team does the work that is necessary for a healthy usage and contribution ecosystem.
+This critical work tends to not be prioritized as a contribution.
+Categories of this type of work include communication, local environment, and DevOps infrastructure.
+
+Here are some specific examples:
+
+* Production bugs
+* Documentation
+* Onboarding tutorials and examples
+* Automated testing
+* CI/CD
+* Local environment
+* Modularization
+* Versioning
+* Monitoring
+* Trailblazing new classes/categories of features
+
+Each of these items is very important to a healthy product ecosystem, yet is unlikely to be prioritized as a contribution.
+
+The core team may be composed of a small number of people on a full-time or a part-time basis.
+The choice depends on the amount of work needed, the availability of resources, and the culture of the organization.
+The most important consideration is to form the team in a way that allows the organization to empower and hold them accountable in the same way as any other team.
+
+Due to their central role, core team members should nearly always fill the role of [Trusted Committers][tc] as well.
+While the [Trusted Committer][tc] role focuses mostly on facilitating others' contribution and use of the project, a core team member regularly contributes to the project as well.
+The core team doesn't have its own business agenda that determines its contributions.
+They decide what to work on based on what will help others most to use and contribute to the project.
+
+A good way to continually remind the core team of this goal is to have them report regularly on:
+
+* number of active teams using the project
+* number of off-team contributions to the project.
+
+Continual focus on these metrics will naturally drive the core team to prioritize generally the right work to create a thriving InnerSource ecosystem around the project.
+
+## Resulting Context
+
+* It is easy to use and contribute to the project.
+* Many teams use and contribute to the project.
+* Core team has their success defined in terms of others' interaction with and response to their project.
+
+## Rationale
+
+Separating out a core team and tasking them in this way helps to fill the gaps that a successful project needs yet are left behind by contributors that are pursuing their own agenda only.
+The core team fills those gaps and greases the wheels so that the contribution ecosystem remains healthy.
+
+## Known Instances
+
+Nike implemented this pattern to manage the InnerSource effort around its reusable CI/CD pipelines.
+
+## Status
+
+Structured
+
+## Author
+
+[Russell R. Rutledge](https://github.com/rrrutledge)
+
+[tc]: https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/learning-path/trusted-committer/