On infrastructure for facilitation of inner source in small development teams

TL;DR

This paper investigates how small development teams can adopt inner source practices by analyzing a case study, identifying organizational and infrastructural needs, and proposing a tailored technical infrastructure to facilitate adoption.

Contribution

It provides a detailed case study on implementing inner source in small teams, including a requirements specification for a supporting software forge and organizational adjustments.

Findings

Potential benefits of inner source for small teams identified

Challenges and organizational needs documented

A tailored infrastructure proposal developed

Abstract

The phenomenon of adopting open source software development practices in a corporate environment is known by many names, one being inner source. The objective of this study is to investigate how an organization consisting of small development teams can benefit from adopting inner source and assess the level of applicability. The research has been conducted as a case study at a software development company. Data collection was carried out through interviews and a series of focus group meetings, and then analyzed by mapping it to an available framework. The analysis shows that the organization possesses potential, and also identified a number of challenges and benefits of special importance to the case company. To address these challenges, the case study synthesized the organizational and infrastructural needs of the organization in a requirements specification describing a technical infrastructure, also known as a software forge, with an adapted organizational context and work process.