Goals using Metrics

This section aims at providing a strategy for your InnerSource metrics that help to understand the path from your initial process till a full InnerSource organization.

It is important to remark that metrics useful for some organizations are not that useful in other contexts. This is similar to the open source projects where a project is not that similar to other in terms of governance, licenses, infrastructure or detailed process, but they are producing open source software and working as a community. This handbook has a similar goal, to detail how an ideal InnerSource project would be, but there are not two organizations using the same InnerSource approach.

Thus, metrics useful for some contexts, for example technological organizations, might not apply to other context such as banks due to external factors such as legal regulations that are even different from country to country.

In addition to all of this, when measuring InnerSource, there are three main purposes to use metrics: check on going work, lead process improvement[^5] and motivational aspects.

• Check on going work: this helps to understand where the development is right now. To be aware of the status helps to understand how fast things are changing when a new process is in the pipeline. This also helps to go from A to B and even trying several approaches to the same problem and have tests for this.

• Lead process improvement: InnerSource means a change in how process works in the following. From a hierarchical way to a flatter way of working, InnerSource needs indicators to help to determine if that process improvement is properly working. And if this is not working, then using another approach or apply other policies.

• Motivational aspects: InnerSource also means cultural change, and this is not usually taken into account in other methodologies. Indeed, this cultural change is identified in InnerSource as key. This should be the type of actions that will help to migrate from a traditional way of working to a more transparent and community- oriented way to work. And metrics can help to lead this process. First, to let developers know where they are and how their process is working, but also to have some fun within the work and competitions through challenges, hackathons and other measurable activities that lead to a more community-oriented organizations.