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Pattern 12 – Create a Single Source of Information.md

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Pattern 12 – Create a Single Source of Information

Title

Create a single source of information

Patlet

A key challenge is the lack of discoverability of InnerSource projects in organizations. The discoverability of IS projects in an organisation can be enhanced by creating a single source of information which can include: a) A searchable catalogue of inner-source assets; b) An IS portal using software such as SAP; c) Adapting an existing portal and adding InnerSource labelled projects; and d) Embedding the portal into the IS on-boarding process.

Problem

Lack of discoverability can hinder efforts by advocates to elicit greater contribution in InnerSource projects. Awareness of IS within the company is limited due to the absence of a single portal for InnerSource project information.

Context

  • Despite best efforts awareness about IS projects is limited within the company.
  • Implementation of stop-gap solutions such as an IS catalogue does not resolve the problem of discoverability.

Forces

  • A false dichotomy exists between IS and assigning teams to work on code.
  • Searching for IS projects on GitHub is not a feasible solution.

Solutions

  • Create a single source information such as a Wiki or an IS portal (P14), a searchable catalog of inner-source assets (P07, P19), or adapt an existing portal and add InnerSource labelled projects to it with the ability to filter with a dedicated InnerSource label (P17).
  • Adopt a seeding strategy by implementing a software forge such as GitHub on an experimental basis (P10, P25). Once developers experience the utility of this, they will drive transition to the central software forge.

Resulting Context

  • Information sharing becomes convenient due to all documentation being in one place (P11).
  • Enhances visibility and enables easy discovery of IS projects by contributors (P08, P17).

Limitation/Blockers

  • For desired effect this needs to be combined with a 12/18-month communications plan targeting leadership, developers, and all functional stakeholders (P25).
  • The portals, Wikis should be visually attractive to engage prospective contributors (P11).
  • Engineers need awareness that their responsibility does not end with putting code in a central repository and that they are serving other engineers (P01).
  • The content of the portal needs to be curated and should have value added bits such as newsletters and key statistics (P17).
  • Developers need to ingrain the habit of searching for code on the portal prior to writing code (P13).
  • A portal can also suffer from a discoverability problem in larger organizations with many developer resources and tools (P04).

Known Instances

  • This pattern has been identified by 9 panellists (P08, P11, P13, P14, P15, P17, P20, P23,and P25) to have been implemented in their organizations.