Earlier this 12 months, I had the great fortune of coming throughout a undertaking on the Linux Foundation known as Community Health Analytics for Open Source Software, or CHAOSS. This undertaking focuses on amassing and enriching metrics from a variety of sources in order that stakeholders in open supply communities can measure the well being of their tasks.
What is CHAOSS?
As I grew conversant in the undertaking’s underlying metrics and aims, one query stored turning over in my head. What is a “healthy” open supply undertaking, and by whose definition?
What’s thought of wholesome by somebody in a selected position is probably not considered that approach by somebody in one other position. It appeared there was a possibility to again out from the granular information that CHAOSS collects and do a market segmentation train, specializing in what could be essentially the most significant contextual questions for a given position, and what metrics CHAOSS collects that may assist reply these questions.
This train was made doable by the truth that the CHAOSS undertaking creates and maintains a set of open supply functions and metric definitions, together with:
- A lot of server-based functions for gathering, aggregating, and enriching metrics (reminiscent of Augur and GrimoireLab).
- The open supply variations of ElasticSearch, Kibana, and Logstash (ELK).
- Identity providers, information evaluation providers, and a variety of integration libraries.
In one in all my previous packages, the place half a dozen groups had been engaged on tasks of various complexity, we discovered a neat software which allowed us to create any form of metric we needed from a easy (or advanced) JQL assertion, after which develop calculations towards and between these metrics. Before we knew it, we had been pulling over 400 metrics from Jira alone, and extra from guide sources.
By the top of the undertaking, we determined that out of the 400-ish metrics, most of them didn’t actually matter when it got here to creating choices in our roles. At the top of the day, there have been solely three that actually mattered to us: “Defect Removal Efficiency,” “Points completed vs. Points committed,” and “Work-in-Progress per Developer.” Those three metrics mattered most as a result of they had been guarantees we made to ourselves, to our shoppers, and to our group members, and had been, due to this fact, essentially the most significant.
Drawing from the teachings discovered by way of that have and the query of what’s a wholesome open supply undertaking?, I jumped into the CHAOSS group and began constructing a set of personas to supply a constructive strategy to answering that query from a role-based lens.
CHAOSS is an open supply undertaking and we attempt to function utilizing democratic consensus. So, I made a decision that as an alternative of stakeholders, I’d use the phrase constituent, as a result of it aligns higher with the accountability we’ve got as open supply contributors to create a extra symbiotic worth chain.
While the train of making this constituent mannequin takes a selected goal-question-metric strategy, there are various methods to phase. CHAOSS contributors have developed nice fashions that phase by vectors, like undertaking profiles (for instance, particular person, company, or coalition) and “Tolerance to Failure.” Every mannequin gives constructive affect when creating metric definitions for CHAOSS.
Based on all of this, I got down to construct a mannequin of who may care about CHAOSS metrics, and what questions every constituent may care about most in every of CHAOSS’ 4 focus areas:
Before we dive in, it’s vital to notice that the CHAOSS undertaking expressly leaves contextual judgments to groups implementing the metrics. What’s “meaningful” and the reply to “What is healthy?” is predicted to differ by group and by undertaking. The CHAOSS software program’s ready-made dashboards give attention to goal metrics as a lot as doable. In this text, we give attention to undertaking founders, undertaking maintainers, and contributors.
Project constituents
While that is in no way an exhaustive record of questions these constituents may really feel are vital, these decisions felt like an excellent place to start out. Each of the Goal-Question-Metric segments beneath is straight tied to metrics that the CHAOSS undertaking is amassing and aggregating.
Now, on to Part 1 of the evaluation!
Project founders
As a undertaking founder, I care most about:
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Is my undertaking helpful to others? Measured as a operate of:
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How many forks over time?
Metric: Repository forks. -
How many contributors over time?
Metric: Contributor depend. -
Net high quality of contributions.
Metric: Bugs filed over time.
Metric: Regressions over time. -
Financial well being of my undertaking.
Metric: Donations/Revenue over time.
Metric: Expenses over time.
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How seen is my undertaking to others?
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Does anybody find out about my undertaking? Do others suppose it’s neat?
Metric: Social media mentions, shares, likes, and subscriptions. -
Does anybody with affect find out about my undertaking?
Metric: Social attain of contributors. -
What are folks saying in regards to the undertaking in public areas? Is it constructive or unfavourable?
Metric: Sentiment (key phrase or NLP) evaluation throughout social media channels.
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How viable is my undertaking?
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Do we’ve got sufficient maintainers? Is the quantity rising or falling over time?
Metric: Number of maintainers. -
Do we’ve got sufficient contributors? Is the quantity rising or falling over time?
Metric: Number of contributors. -
How is velocity altering over time?
Metric: Percent change of code over time.
Metric: Time between pull request, code evaluation, and merge.
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How diverse & inclusive is my undertaking?
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Do we’ve got a sound, public, Code of Conduct (CoC)?
Metric: CoC repository file test. -
Are occasions related to my undertaking actively inclusive?
Metric: Manual reporting on occasion ticketing insurance policies and occasion inclusion actions. -
Does our undertaking do an excellent job of being accessible?
Metric: Validation of typed assembly minutes being posted.
Metric: Validation of closed captioning used throughout conferences.
Metric: Validation of color-blind-accessible supplies in displays and in undertaking front-end designs.
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How a lot value does my undertaking characterize?
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How can I assist organizations perceive how a lot money and time utilizing our undertaking would save them (labor funding)
Metric: Repo depend of points, commits, pull requests, and the estimated labor fee. -
How can I perceive the quantity of downstream worth my undertaking creates and the way very important (or not) it’s to the broader group to keep up my undertaking?
Metric: Repo depend of what number of different tasks depend on my undertaking. -
How a lot alternative is there for these contributing to my undertaking to make use of what they study engaged on it to land good jobs and at what organizations (aka dwelling wage)?
Metric: Count of organizations utilizing or contributing to this library.
Metric: Averages of salaries for builders working with this type of undertaking.
Metric: Count of job postings with key phrases that match this undertaking.
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Project maintainers
As a Project Maintainer, I care most about:
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Am I an environment friendly maintainer?
Metric: Time PR’s wait earlier than a code evaluation.
Metric: Time between code evaluation and subsequent PR’s.
Metric: How a lot of my code critiques are approvals?
Metric: How a lot of my code critiques are rejections/rework requests?
Metric: Sentiment evaluation of code evaluation feedback. -
How do I get extra folks to assist me keep this factor?
Metric: Count of social attain of undertaking contributors. -
Is our code high quality getting higher or worse over time?
Metric: Count what number of regressions are being launched over time.
Metric: Count what number of bugs are being launched over time.
Metric: Time between bug submitting, pull request, evaluation, merge, and launch.
Project builders and contributors
As a undertaking developer or contributor, I care most about:
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What issues of worth can I achieve from contributing to this undertaking and the way lengthy may it take to appreciate that worth?
Metric: Downstream worth.
Metric: Time between commits, code critiques, and merges. -
Are there good prospects for utilizing what I study by contributing to extend my job alternatives?
Metric: Living wage. -
How standard is that this undertaking?
Metric: Counts of social media posts, shares, and favorites. -
Do group influencers find out about my undertaking?
Metric: Social attain of founders, maintainers, and contributors.
By creating this record, we’ve simply begun to place meat on the contextual bones of CHAOSS, and with the primary launch of metrics within the undertaking this summer time, I can’t wait to see what different nice concepts the broader open supply group might need to contribute and what else we will all study (and measure!) from these contributions.
Other roles
Next, it’s essential to study extra about goal-question-metric units for different roles (reminiscent of foundations, company open supply program places of work, enterprise threat and authorized groups, human sources, and others) in addition to finish customers, who’ve a distinctly totally different set of issues they care about in relation to open supply.
If you’re an open supply contributor or constituent, we invite you to come check out the project and get engaged locally!
