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Pattern 17 – Free up Developer Time to Contribute.md

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Pattern 17 – Free up Developer Time to Contribute

Title

Free up developer time to contribute

Patlet

Lack of free time can prevent many people from contributing to InnerSource projects. Developer time can be freed up by either decreasing their workload with support from product managers and product owners, creating a mechanism whereby team members can request discretionary time to contribute from their managers, or making clear time allocations in developer schedule.

Problem

Heavy workloads and multiple priorities prevent engineering teams from actively contributing to InnerSource projects. The lack of time for contributions is largely due to lack of middle-management support which in turn is influenced by budgetary concerns and InnerSource not being part of the KPI's.

Context

  • Teams are funded based on their productivity which means even if a motivated contributor is interested to help another team with their code review request, they will be questioned by middle-management for their deviation from regular work.
  • The absence of explicit agreements and a central coordinating body such as the ISPO
  • (InnerSource Promotion Office) contributes to a lack of formal time allocation for contributions.

Forces

  • Established software development methodologies such as Scrum with its emphasis on delivering features in set timeframes (sprints) also tends to work against allocation of time towards InnerSource which is a long-term process.
  • InnerSource is seen as a technical fix rather than a cultural transformation.

Solutions

  • Create time allocations for learning, innovation, and contribution. This can range from 20% to 5% depending on the organization (P07, P09, P18).
  • An indirect method of providing opportunity to engage with InnerSource is to conduct time-boxed hackathons without the pressure to achieve a specific business goal (P04).

Resulting Context

  • This will help retain talent within the company and help sustain a culture of innovation and improvement (P07, P09, P18).

Limitation/Blockers

  • Despite time allocations the engagement for documentation improvements, best practice methodology, commitments to standardizing repositories can remain low (P15).

  • The time allocation might not be used exclusively by people for InnerSource and can get distributed amongst other areas of interest (for e.g. Continuous Integration, continuous deployment, security etc.) (P20).

  • The organization needs to function in a team-based approach where individual or groups of teams operate in the IS approach (P25).

Known Instances

  • This pattern has been identified by 4 panellists (P07, P15, P18, and P20) to have been implemented in their organizations.