bad-weather-for-liftoff.md

May 5, 2026 · View on GitHub

An InnerSource initiative fails to demonstrate improvement in quality or speed because the team lacks open source development experience and deadline pressure prevents adopting new ways of working. Starting InnerSource pilots with experienced practitioners and protecting time for new practices are prerequisites for success.

Problem

The team is not able to demonstrate any increases in quality or speed, because they did not adopt any of the principles of OSS development.
As a result, the InnerSource approach is discredited.

Context

Company A would like to start an InnerSource initiative in order to increase development speed and quality of software artifacts.
There are not many developers in company A, which are experienced in OSS development practices.
The company was not able to contract or hire an experienced InnerSourcerer.
Company A has put together a small team of software developers to work on a single project InnerSource style. The project has tight deadlines to meet.

Forces

By default, humans will be resistant to change if they have no compelling reason to change.
Pressure (in this case induced by the project being a pilot and also induced by the deadline) reduces the ability to change and explore new ways of working.
There is a natural tendency to pick low hanging fruits (e. g. tooling) and stop there.
For InnerSource to blossom, a critical mass of experienced developers which can walk the talk is required.