Upgrade Your Drupal Skills

We trained 1,000+ Drupal Developers over the last decade.

See Advanced Courses NAH, I know Enough

Project Management + Estimation + Mentorship = Sustainability

Parent Feed: 

These are some of the ingredients that can make open source sustainable

The title of this blog post, "Project Management + Estimation + Mentorship = Sustainability" does not represent an exact formula for solving the challenges of open source sustainability. It establishes what I feel are the ingredients to a recipe that could significantly improve the sustainability of open source projects. To discover the right recipe for sustainability, it is key to define sustainability.

Defining open source sustainability

Open source sustainability is the ability of a community of people and organizations to collaboratively contribute to software that is freely available for anyone to use and alter.

The above description could sound like a standard cooperative or partnership agreement except that the General Public License (GPL), attached to most open source projects, makes the product of this arrangement entirely free for anyone to use and alter. This is the challenge of open source sustainability: the result of our labor, aka the product, is absolutely free. There is no doubt that people and organizations have found incredible value in open source software. But what is the value of the labor?

If no one owns something that is so important to us, how do we know that it will be cared for?

Personally, I am passionate about maintaining my project the Webform module for Drupal 8, because it is my baby. The reality is that our kids grow up and we need to make sure they are independent and healthy. We put in the time and effort because we consider it worthwhile and because we care. This parent/child analogy helps clarify the simple but key notion that everyone who contributes and is involved in open source cares about their project and community. People and organizations contribute a considerable amount of time to build and maintain their open source projects. It’s time and energy that could equate to money.

Time = Value = Money

Let's accept the reality that when a developer contributes to open source, they are typically taking time away for their paying jobs (and family) to write code, respond to issues, and even mentor contributors. Open source has added a massive amount of value to our work and society. Open source software is everywhere. It is on our devices and is used and relied upon by every tech giant.

Open source software requires time that results in high quality and valuable software, which has monetary value.

Money != Sustainability
(Money does NOT equal Sustainability)

When I was first starting thinking about how I could make my massive contribution to Drupal sustainable, I mistakenly thought money would automatically solve my problem. Money helps, but when money enters an open source collaboration things get more challenging to manage. One of the big takeaways from the Request for Commit podcast is that even when an open source project has funds, it’s complicated to determine how to distribute this money.

To properly propose, collect, track, distribute, and manage the funding of open source projects there needs to be a process.

Process = Sustainability

We are a community of people contributing to a vast collaboration, and this collaboration is defined and driven by our process. The fact that Wikipedia’s definition of 'Software maintainer' originates from Open Source software says so much about our process.

In free and Open Source software, a software maintainer or package maintainer is usually one or more people who build source code into a binary package for distribution, commit patches, or organize code in a source repository.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_maintainer

The role of software maintainer does not exist unless people contribute patches to be committed to the project. Software maintainers are mentoring contributors when they are reviewing patches. We are all mentoring each other when we review someone else's patch.

Everyone needs a mentor, and everyone is a mentor in open source.

Mentorship is what grows open source

Mentorship is a relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentorship

Mentorship helps to encourage high-quality contributions while also growing the community around open source software. It is essential that we embrace this very basic aspect of opening source development. Mentorship and code review is something that everyone understands and values.

Code review ensures quality and security. Organizations generally trust open source software because they know that multiple people review patches and pull requests before they are committed, and everyone is continually reviewing the code after it has been committed.

Open source communities need to leverage the fact that all code is peer-reviewed before and after it is committed to a project, especially when approaching organizations to fund and contribute to open source projects.

Getting organizations involved in funding and contributing to open source is crucial to improving sustainability.

Organizations need to be involved and committed to open source sustainability

Initially, I thought that leveraging the importance of mentorship and peer code review would inspire everyone to help fund and sustain open source. My mistake in this approach is that it is only applicable to people and organizations who understand and are involved in open source - they already care about and value mentorship and code review. The real challenge for improving open source sustainability is getting people who are not involved, yet rely on open source, to start contributing and funding the open source projects on which they depend

The more we can inspire people and organizations to become involved in open source the more sustainable we will make our projects and community.

How do we get people and organizations more involved in open source?

I found that the only way to begin answering this question is to step into the shoes of people and organizations who are not part of open source. One of my most immediate conclusions was…

People and organizations need tangible results to justify contributing to open source.

It is entirely fair for anyone being asked to contribute to open source to question what do they get in return. Sorry, but "free software" is too vague of an answer and there are some fantastic articles and blog posts that do provide great arguments as to why people should contribute to open source. Generally, we tout the benefits of contributing to open source and every project, including Drupal, offers ways to get involved. Open source development is a different process than what anyone is accustomed to in their regular day-to-day education or employment. Open source projects tend to not have tightly structured organization charts, hard deadlines, salaries or holiday bonuses. There are certain aspects of how businesses work that undeniably make sense and help everyone get their jobs done in a productive and happy work environment.

People and organizations need a tangible process to contribute to open source.

Yes, open source is a different process which changes from project to project. Two things I found that were typically under-recognized in most open source projects is the importance of project management and estimation.

We are underestimating the value of estimation

Estimation helps set reasonable expectations

Estimation (or estimating) is the process of finding an estimate, or approximation, which is a value that is usable for some purpose even if input data may be incomplete, uncertain, or unstable.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimation

My last blog addressed, "Are we afraid to estimate our work in Drupal and Open Source?" and I hope the biggest take away is that estimation helps set reasonable expectations that make it easier for people and organizations to get involved in open source. Improving estimation within our open source projects would remove the "incomplete, uncertain, or unstable" aspects from our work. Estimation, even incorrect estimation (there will undoubtedly be trial-and-error periods), allows everyone to better understand the amount of work that needs to be done and the money required to accomplish it.

Discovering and improving how we collaborative estimate within open source would make everyone's experience more enjoyable and productive. I want to emphasize that anyone who gets involved in open source should have an enjoyable and productive experience

Excellent and thoughtful project management is what ensures that everyone is productive and happy.

Project management helps people be more productive and happy

Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management

Open source software is created via a massive team effort from people spread out across the globe. We have created a process where people collaborate to develop high quality, valuable, and secure products. Along our journeys to develop open source software we have built amazing communities that consists of more than just developers, and include people from every role in the software industry. Generally, open source does attract more developers because they write the code.

I am one of those open source software developers. I value my experience within open source but I have also come to understand that open source software is more than writing code - it is about the process of contributing code to a community.

The open source process has some major problems. Personally, at the beginning of this year, I recognized the risk of burning out and recently wrote about offboarding contributors. My post concluded with the realization that improving how we manage our projects and how the role of project management is going to keep open source communities healthy and sustainable.

Besides keeping people within the open source community prosperous, better project management will make it easier for people and organizations outside of open source to become members of our community.

Estimation combined with project management makes it easier for people and organizations to contribute to open source

Let’s acknowledge that Drupal is being used to build enterprise applications for some very big organizations. Some of these organizations have the potential to bring their game-changing resources to our community. Fortune 500 companies can easily contribute a few hundred thousand dollars to Drupal and open source. And some do because they see it as an investment. Frankly, I think the only thing limiting more organizations from investing in Drupal is the fact that it is hard for them to understand precisely what they will be getting for their money. Estimation would help them in that regard.

I am willing to go a step further and say that…

Better project management will increase the level open source contribution from existing contributors.

1 Project Manager = 100 contributors

Open source projects are always looking for new contributors. Open source disproved the notion that adding more developers to a project does not increase productivity. Still, open source needs to pay attention to everyone’s experience when contributing to open source. Thoughtful and excellent project management can make the difference between a developer making one contribution vs. a developer making a sustained ongoing contribution to an open source project.

I have personally seen numerous times how a good project manager can mediate conflicts and negotiate resolutions with our community. Project managers make sure developers don’t burn out while making sure a stakeholder's needs are addressed.

Project managers can help ensure that people and organizations get tangible results when they contribute and support open source.

Showing the value of project management (and leadership) in open source

Gábor Hojtsy, the multilingual initiative lead for Drupal 8, learned and shared his incredible experience, scaling Open Source projects, how 1300+ improved Drupal 8’s multilingual features. His leadership shows how careful project management can get people involved and providing sustainable contributions to an open source project.

Addressing the challenges of mentorship, estimation, and project management

To improve sustainability within open source we need to address a few challenges.

First, we need to explore how to make sure people and organizations get the most out of their experience when contributing and funding open source. Encouraging mentorship fosters a healthy interaction between software maintainers and contributors. Estimation sets reasonable expectations for people and organizations working within open source.

Secondly, I strongly feel that improving and valuing project management is the unrecognized secret sauce to growing open source communities and ensuring that people and organizations have a positive and sustainable experience.

Finally, open source communities must respect that some organizations need to see tangible results when contributing and funding open source software.

Recipes require taste testers.

This recipe, 'Project Management + Estimation + Mentorship = Sustainability' is going to require some more thought, experimentation, and tweaking. This summer I am going to do a more in-depth exploration of the recipe and open source sustainability.

For now, I would love to get your first impressions and thoughts in the comments below.

If we consider all the projects we’ve successfully collaborated on thus far, it’s a no-brainer that we can come up with some pretty great solutions when it comes to estimation too.

By this Fall, I am hoping we can try out some new sustainability experiments

Original Post: 

About Drupal Sun

Drupal Sun is an Evolving Web project. It allows you to:

  • Do full-text search on all the articles in Drupal Planet (thanks to Apache Solr)
  • Facet based on tags, author, or feed
  • Flip through articles quickly (with j/k or arrow keys) to find what you're interested in
  • View the entire article text inline, or in the context of the site where it was created

See the blog post at Evolving Web

Evolving Web