Skip to content
Duck Alignment Academy

Program management for open source projects

  • Home
  • About
  • Speaking
  • Resources
    • Program Management for Open Source Projects
    • Newsletter
    • AI policy resources
    • Writing advice
    • Other resources
  • Talks
  • Contact me!
2023-12-27

Open source leadership resolutions for 2024

If you’re looking for some inspiration for your new year’s resolutions, here’s what I’m thinking about for 2024.

Categories Posts
2023-12-20

How to get started in project management

Do you want to get started in project management but you’re not sure how? Open source projects have plenty of opportunity to jump in & help.

Categories Posts
2023-12-13

Focus release criteria on user-visible behavior

Focusing on user-visible behavior allows you distinguish between what you should fix and what you must fix.

Categories Posts
2023-12-06

Understand your community’s scope

It’s hard to say “we want to be for everyone” and continue on to “who is also interested in this work.”

Categories Posts
2023-11-29

It’s okay for your project to end

Open source projects don’t last forever, and that’s okay. The end of a project can be a sign of success, or at least partial success.

Categories Posts
2023-11-22

Save 40% on Program Management for Open Source Projects (and other ebooks)!

Use promo code turkeysale2023 at pragprog.com, to save 40% on ebooks and audio books through November 29.

Categories Posts
2023-11-15

Translations represent the hardest part of bootstrapping trust

The difficulty in reviewing translations is what makes those contributions so important. But how do you bootstrap trust for your translators?

Categories Posts
2023-11-09

New project repo basics

Before you start writing any code, what do you fill a new repo with? I’ve created a sample repository with some really basic examples.

Categories Posts
2023-11-01

Retaining your new Hacktoberfest contributors

Hacktoberfest is over and hopefully you had a bunch of new contributors to your project. So now how do you keep them around?

Categories Posts
2023-10-25

Managing issue tracker labels

Labels are arbitrary tags that either apply to an issue or not. But how you use them in your project can get very complicated.

Categories Posts

Posts pagination

  • «
  • 1
  • 2
  • …
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • …
  • 16
  • 17
  • »

About This Site

Learn how to get your ducks in a row, your cats herded, or any other animal metaphor you can think of.

2025 trends

Hand-drawn graphs on a sheet of white paper sitting on a desk.
Read my 2025 open source trends predictions.

Get the book

Cover of the book Program Management for Open Source Projects

Ebooks available from The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Print available from Bookshop and Amazon.

Newsletter

Subscribe to the free monthly newsletter to keep up on the latest news, events, and updates.

Upcoming talks

Want to book me for your project or company? See the Speaking page for details.

Latest posts

  • Your only obligations are the promises you make2025-06-25
  • The right tool is the one people can use2025-06-04
  • It’s okay to be partial to your work2025-05-28
  • Growing your project means doing less coding2025-05-21

Except where noted, all content © Ben Cotton and provided under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license except where noted. Logo design by alexlexi.

Coldbox WordPress theme by mirucon.

  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • RSS Feed
Back To Top