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[Pattern Draft] Contributor journey optimization #787
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@dellagustin-sap would love to get your feedback on this, as this is your idea after all :)
@dellagustin-sap hope you recovered from all the input during FOSS Backstage :)
Any feedback that you got during the event, that you would like to work into this pattern draft?
I would love to push "a version" of this pattern out into our repo, so that we can more easily point other people to it and gather more feedback.
Hi @spier , there was quite some discussion after the presentation, which was very nice. The problem is, I'm having trouble remembering it...
I remember:
- There was some debate about the name, whether it should be just Contributor Journey or Contributor Journey Optimization (I'm still on the latter)
- The feedback that there should be a step where the person looks at the code, I'm thinking about expanding the "Participate" step to Observe and Participate, or Learn and Participate, to keep the number of "journey steps" short. I''m not sure I'm ok with using the term Learn at this particular stage of the journey, at least no just "Learn", because there is learning also before that, but at this stage it is a different type of learning, it is a bit like learning to use the software vs learning the insides of the software and the project
Concerning 1.)
Count me in the "likes contributor journey optimization" bucket.
Maybe there's two sides this pattern that belong together:
- The definition of the steps of the contributor journey. Those could be very similar across organisations and even to many open source projects.
- The steps taken to make it easier for contributors to move from one stage to stage. I would imagine that there's a bit of variety depeding on the exact nature of the InnerSource project, company culture etc. My hunch would be that one might even see a link to our crossing the chasm pattern. As is that one talks about things to do to make the InnerSource program itself successful. I would imagine that some of the steps described in there might also help move users of an InnerSource project along the contributor journey.
@MaineC many open source maintainers must have the same issue. i.e. how to turn users into contributors, contributors into maintainers, etc.
Have you come across any writeups about this? There must be some, just I don't know how to best search for it.
Here some places that I did find. How to find more?
- https://un.curl.dev/people.html
- https://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#community-and-motivation
- https://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#transitions
[Update]:
I just found the other references that @dellagustin-sap posted here:
InnerSourceCommons/ispo-working-group#157
I guess that should give us enough reading material for a first version of this pattern.
https://blog.isabel-drost.de/building-online-communities-from-the-0mq-trenches130/ adds some more links and background
(I specifically shared the Apache Beam blogpost on slack that Guilherme included because I remember them trying to outgrow their seed community towards ppl from other orgs, the thing I liked and didn't know before was the concept where contributors are invited to review Pars by committers)
curious what "knows the project" adds. Is this 'they know of it and aren't contributing to or using it'? maybe a different word than "knows" needed here?
Also, between making contributions and being a trusted committer, should we add 2 stages - reviews and comments on non-code contributions and reviews and comments on code contributions or just reviews and comments on contributions.
dellagustin
commented
Mar 29, 2025
Hi @sallydeering1 , this Miro Board could help understanding the background of the pattern: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVL4Wk-Os=/
I also have this slides, that I used to present the concept on the InnerSource Gathering in Berlin: https://dam.sap.com/mac/u/a/jtmWHNd?rc=10&doi=SAP1193221
I'll try to address your comment later. I need to do some thinking.
Great work! First-time contributors often face challenges. Mapping their journey into a pattern would not only highlight those struggles but also provide useful insights for organizations adopting InnerSource.
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Closes #786
See rendered preview here.
The pattern was mostly generated with this ChatGPT prompt.
Would be great to get feedback especially about "the concept" part of the prompt.