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incentive-mechanisms-for-voluntary-contribution.md

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Title

Incentive mechanisms to foster voluntary contribution

Patlet

TBD

Problem

In hierarchical and silo-organized organizations, getting voluntary contributions in InnerSource projects can be challenging. It is crucial to create mechanisms to incentivize managers to foster voluntary contributions. Consider the following story:

Company A has started an InnerSource initiative. Their InnerSource concept expected to have associates voluntarily contributing to InnerSource projects, regardless of topic and regardless of home-business-unit alignment.

After some time in activity, the core team realizes that their InnerSource project is not getting voluntary contributions. While engaging with potential individual contributors, the core team (pattern link) has consistently learned that the contributors in question were not allowed to contribute or have their participation in InnerSource projects rejected by their respective line managers. The reasons presented by management are:

  • the lack of strategic alignment between the InnerSource project goal and the business unit product/service portfolio,
  • managers have planned their developer's capacity 100% to the home business units projects.

So, the management is not motivated to provide their scarce developer capacity to the InnerSource project.

As a result, the total number of contributors remained restricted to the core team and the project cannot build a community of developers. Furthermore, contributions mostly originated in the same business unit the Dedicated Community Leader (link to Dedicated Community Leader) belonged to. Innovation did not happen in the expected scale. Top management is no longer convinced that InnerSource yields the expected benefits and abandons the initiative altogether.

Context

  • The InnerSource initiative is sponsored (budget) by top level management.
  • The managers (middle-management) have their bonus directly depending only on business units results under their responsibility
  • The capacity of every associate is usually planned by their superiors and 100% allocated to the home business unit projects
  • Cross organizational collaboration is not the norm.
  • Contributions to InnerSource projects are expected to be made during working hours.

Forces

  • Managers of business units are held accountable for their results. Reducing the capacity of an associate contributing to an InnerSource project rather than the goals of the business unit will make it harder for them to reach or exceed their goals.
  • The more time an associate spends on contributions to an InnerSource project which does not benefit his day-to-day work, the more will the workload for his teammates in his business unit increase.
  • The individual contributor would like to participate to enhance his professional network within the company and gain knowledge and experience with both the InnerSource method and the technical area he makes a contribution to.

(Possible) Solution

  • The top management sets and communicates a corporate strategy where development capacity are to be planned and committed to a maximum of 85% to home business units projects
  • A central funded formal contracting mechanisms, where line managers get refunded by the percentage of associates work time in InnerSource is in place.
  • Managers (middle-management) have a percentage of their bonus associated to contribution and the results of InnerSource projects not directly related/sponsored by their business units.
  • Utilize any existing engineering-wide bonus that allots some percentage of each employee's bonus to be aligned with Inner Source interactions. It could be # of commits, or commits + issues + documentation + chat interaction, etc. Utilize some kind of personally-linked statistic to fill, for example, 15% of each employees bonus. Note that this encourages after-hours type work more-so than regular work-week hours, but if combined with other solutions above, could hit the issue from multiple angles. (used partially @ RedHat)

Resulting Context

  • The top management communication of the strategic decision to plan and commit 85% of developers capacity and have 15% buffer for other company initiatives, for instance InnerSource projects, shows their support and sets a clear sign that InnerSource is part of the corporate goal and get executive air cover.
  • Allocation of corporate funds to business units for reimbursement of development capacity makes easier for business units to contribute to InnerSource projects without to commit their cost center budget.
  • Setting the bonus of middle-management partially depending on contributions and the success of InnerSource projects, motivates managers to encourage their developers participate on those projects
  • With a stable group of contributors, it is more likely that some of them will eventually achieve trusted committer status and the InnerSource project will be able to establish a healthy community around their project.

Status

  • Initial

Authors

  • Diogo Fregonese (Robert Bosch GmbH)
  • Georg Gruetter (Robert Bosch GmbH)
  • Robert Hansel (Robert Bosch GmbH)
  • Nick Yeates

Alias

Get Contributions Despite Silo Thinking