Duck Alignment Academy - Page 4 of 17 - Program management for open source projects

Companies: make sustainable contributions

We learned over the past year or two that corporate participation in an open source project is not guaranteed. The contributions a company makes need to be sustainable long after the company stops participating.

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Volunteers can’t be blockers

Figure out which processes are truly critical and accept that the non-critical ones may get missed from time to time. If you have paid contributors, they should be responsible for the critical processes.

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“Helping” versus being helpful

Every situation is different, so ask “would it be helpful if I _?” When you get agreement on your help, your work will be helpful.

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When to add QA to your project

Add QA when someone volunteers to do it. Recruit QA when your user-reported bugs start to overwhelm your developers.

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A veneer of organization

Building up too much process early is a way to look busy without accomplishing anything. You have to fit it to the community’s need.

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Your project is political, people’s identities aren’t

No project that involves people is “purely technical.” And “ideologically motivated” is not a synonym for “bad”.

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“Finished” and “no longer developed” aren’t the same

Software is finished when it reliably does what it’s intended to.

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Tasks and projects: what’s the difference?

It’s not always clear how to distinguish between tasks and projects. My rule of thumb: tasks have binary state, projects have several states.

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Membership needs a removal process

People need to be removed for a variety of reasons, and having planned ahead makes the process much easier.

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The easy fixes probably aren’t in your code

Mature projects don’t have many easy fixes left in the code. But test coverage, documentation, websites, and other areas probably have plenty.

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