duplicated-projects.md

Title

Duplicated Projects

Patlet

After opening codebases through InnerSource, teams discover they have independently built overlapping or identical products, but territorial management and differing technical approaches make consolidation difficult. Establishing a neutral governance process that gives all managers meaningful influence over the merged project makes it possible to consolidate duplicated efforts without losing key stakeholders.

Problem

• Multiple teams are doing InnerSource, but they don't want to work together.
• Multiple teams are working on the same product. How do they merge?

Story

e.g. Splunk.

• 4 unique products have significant overlap. Discovered after opening them up as InnerSource projects.
• This could apply to more than just InnerSource situations

Context

• Multiple teams (doing InnerSource or not) are trying to tackle the same problem.
• Managers want to run the project in their way.
• Manager B gets upset if something Manager A does breaks B's team.
• It's easier to be mean when you're not face-to-face.

Forces

• People don't want to lose their jobs (or reason for existence).
• Managers can be territorial with their project.
• People rewrite 100% rather than using the 80% that is already there (even though it would be better to InnerSource).
• Related to the Not Invented Here pattern.
• Related to the Common Requirements pattern.
• It's like buying another company and having duplicate projects.

Solutions

• We are lacking a solution of establishing a baseline (which of the 4 projects is the baseline for the merge)?
• An open and transparent process CI/CD, requirements backlog, deployment, etc.
• Anyone participates in the process in the same way.
• Project lead is assisted by the former managers.
• Move away from (benevolent) dictator (e.g. eng. manager?). Could this be hard to achieve?
• Experience has shown that if people are in the same room then things tend to go better. Not so much by email/phone. You are nicer if you see the people.

Resulting Context

• Managers have been convinced to be a part of the solution.
• Managers are bought in to a process where they have left some control but still retain influence.

Status

• Initial