Stack Overflow & InnerSource
This is the first of a series of posts about how an internal Stack Overflow Q&A will complement your organization’s efforts to InnerSource.
21 years ago, Eric S. Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar, an essay turned book that highlights the positive attributes of free & open software principles. By using examples like the history of Linux and his own project, Fetchmail, ESR distinguishes between two distinct styles of development styles, aptly referred to as The Cathedral (“carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation”) and The Bazaar (“great, babbling [bazaar] of differing agendas and approaches out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles”). Translated, the two types of styles refer to siloed work done by individuals as opposed to free & open development by the masses.
The essay prompted a movement in the enterprise, led notably by Netscape, which became the first company to release their source code for the Netscape Communicator suite as free software. In early 1998, as the industry found a new opportunity to educate and advocate for the superiority of an open development process, Christine Peterson suggested the term “open source” and it’s safe to say that the software development world has never been the same.
Fast Forward to InnerSource
While the beneficial elements of Open Source to the public programming world are widely known at this point, a newer movement to employ the same development methodology to internal software development teams has taken hold. InnerSource, or the practice of applying the lessons learned from developing open source software to the way an organization develops software internally, will lead a transformative culture shift when done well. By encouraging the philosophy of openness internally, large enterprises will empower their development teams to move faster, break down the information silos that frustrate employees, drive greater levels of development collaboration and knowledge reuse, and ultimately give their most valued employees back time in their day to focus on the things that really matter to them: innovating and creating amazing products for their customers.
When an organization promotes its developers to work openly and in sync, both management and the end users benefit in a way that contributes to a healthy, engaged engineering culture. Erin Bank of InnerSource Commons discusses the critical components of an InnerSource program in an informative article titled InnerSource: How to Leverage Open Source in the Enterprise. Developers told her what they want (a low barrier to entry, the right environment, and guidelines rather than mandates), how they want it (let them control their own destiny, manage and govern their own projects, and communicate effectively) and, most importantly, to keep it simple. These findings coincide nicely with what developers tell us in our annual surveys, specifically that they want to work with tools they’re familiar with (see: low barrier to entry) and appreciate autonomy (see: manage and govern their own projects).
For most organizations, adopting an InnerSource strategy means ushering in a new way of doing things. With that comes a culture change that they should to embrace and have leaders advocate for. Jono Bacon, an expert on Community Management and author of The Art of Community, encourages organizations to first look at the problem from the vantage point of its staff by asking, “how can you make [your employees] work easier, more efficient, more rewarding, and more collaborative?”. Once you understand the existing pain points that your employees struggle with, you’ll know exactly which parts of the culture you need to improve, the parts of the organization where you’ll face headwinds, and the areas of least resistance that you’ll rely on to evangelize these new principles.
Stack Overflow, Open Source & InnerSource
As our CEO, Joel Spolsky, outlines in The Stack Overflow Age, it used to be a pain for developers to find answers to their questions. Those that grew up in the internet age will laugh at the idea of developers spending hours going through physical books & dog-eared documentation, but that was a reality. In the earliest days of the internet, programmers tried Usenet, an old system of online discussion newsgroups, but that become technically obsolete as the web grew. In came Experts Exchange which, contrary to the principles of open source, required programmers to either pay for the content or contribute answers. The resulting quality of answers was low and programmers simply wouldn’t pay for access for information that should be free.
In 2008, Joel & Jeff Atwood came together to form Stack Overflow as a completely free, open and gamified Q&A for programmers to ask questions, seek answers and curate that information by letting the community determine what’s most accurate. By applying the simple concepts of open source to knowledge sharing, Stack Overflow has grown to become the largest software developer community in the world, hosting ~58m monthly unique visitors and generating over 33,000 new questions per day.
This is the first is a series of posts about how an internal Stack Overflow Q&A will complement your organization’s efforts to InnerSource. I’ll next discuss the damaging effects of information silos, reliance on SMEs, and tribal knowledge to your organization.
