Launching an Open Source Office

Project Description: At a previous company I began noticing that we were spending a lot of time “reinventing” projects that already existed as open source or even rebuilding our own version of proprietary things that other business units in the same company already had built.

I didn’t know it at the time but what I had stumbled upon was a commonly experienced problem that open source and inner source had a solution for. After doing some research and stumbling on the TODO group I found that the company could improve our efficiency by so much if we adopted open/inner source practices.

How I drove change

I decided to write a proposal to open an open source office and personally lead this drive for efficiency and software re-use. The charter outlined several key areas to organize my thoughts around what and why we were trying to do. I proposed this to my VP, legal, and manager with great success. My job changed to this open source leader full time and I was able to grow a small but mighty team. We set up action plans for our first year of operation as well and implemented OSS policy, licensing guidelines, seeded starter inner source projects, as well as began tracking software reuse metrics to track against our goals.

Open Source Office Charter

I’m sharing the proposal that was developed here in the hopes that it might inspire others on their own journey’s in open source and intrapeneurship.

What

Purpose/Mission

Create strategic advantage through using and producing open source and inner source software.
Drive adoption and leverage of software reuse from internal and external sources.

Scope

This office will enable, promote, and accelerate the use of open source software.
It is not designed to take on all of the work of a program or project, although it will collaborate. That keeps a distributed working model so that work does not become centralized and encumbered.

Responsibilities

Clearly communicating the open source strategy within and outside COMPANY
Owning and overseeing the execution of the strategy
Facilitating the effective use and leverage of open source software in our products
Ensuring high-quality and frequent releases of code to open source communities
Fostering an open source culture within the organization
Maintaining open source license compliance reviews and oversight
Scouting open source technology opportunities with advance development teams

Why

Business Outcomes

Reduced time to market of new product’s
Lowered development costs
Decreased legal risk of current open source usage (License Compliance)
Decreased security risk by using common updated software packages
Increase brand quality through consistent features and user workflows
Redirect the “not invented here” culture into a “Best Team Wins” culture
Recruit and retain great software talent for COMPANY
Set and maintain open source software policies and best practices

How

Staffing Critical Mass (Team to work closely with existing legal dept.)

Open Source Director - Zack Koppert
Open Source Developer (x2)
Marketing/Communications (x1)

Measuring Success

Amount of open source utilized by product lines
Reuse of Inner Source programs
COMPANY reputation in open source communities
Ability to recruit and retain talented developers
Compliance to open source licenses
Number of internal and external contributions to Open Software Projects

Budget

Staffing, Tools, Development, Equipment, and Travel

Timeline

Announce on 6/15/18 with Zack as Director and XXX to cover Zack’s current role until the open position is filled.
Form and staff office in 2018 and beyond

Growth Path

Launch and incubate this group to serve BUSINESS-UNIT before expanding to support COMPANY-wide
Expand beyond BUSINESS-UNIT to COMPANY-wide office expanding reuse and compliance
Integrate at a PARENT-COMPANY level working with other companies