The economy is tough right now, and many OSPOs (Open Source Program Offices) are feeling the pinch. We’ve been seeing layoffs and downsizing that have impacted quite a few OSPOs, which has left people needing to continue to do much of the same work, but with fewer people.

I’ve always been a fan of using documentation for scalability, and there are some common questions people tend to ask me, so I try to turn those into blog posts. This allows me to provide information to a wider variety of people, but also, when I get questions, I can send a link to a blog post along with some additional advice and/or resources depending on how they asked the question. The work that OSPOs do within organizations lends itself nicely to providing information at scale, since that work often involves policies, advice, and best practices that can be used by other people working across the rest of the organization.

When I was at VMware, we had a robust set of self-service best practice guides and resources available internally to all employees. It had sections about compliance that were focused on allowed licenses and internal processes, but it went way beyond just compliance. We had best practices for how to participate in open source communities, how to manage open source projects, automated testing, releasing open source projects, and so much more. We also had a Slack channel where people could ask questions, and the answers often involved a link to one of these resources. But the best part was that often those answers and links came from people outside of the OSPO. Within the OSPO, we monitored the channel carefully to make sure that people were providing accurate information, and even though we had a large OSPO, VMware was a very large company, and our guides along with the Q&A channel really helped us scale.

Unfortunately, our guides were not publicly available, so I can’t link to them, but I have included a link to some similar policy examples and templates that others have published in the additional resources section below. If you lead or work in an OSPO, I encourage you to think about how you can use documentation and Q&A channels to help scale your work, and if you want feedback or help with scaling your OSPO or related topics, I’m available for consulting engagements.

Additional Resources: 

• Open Source Policy Examples and Templates collected by the TODO Group
• CHAOSS Practitioner Guides
• TODO Group Guides and Resources
• Demonstrating Organizational Value

Photo by Ilya Semenov on Unsplash