Program Management for Open Source Projects

How to Guide Your Community-Driven, Open Source Project

Ben Cotton

• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781680509946
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Computer Science

Bureaucratic processes naturally develop in large organizations, and open source projects are no different. The trick is to keep the processes intentional and in service of the project. That's program management and you have probably been doing it even if you don't have that title. Make your open source projects successful, predictable, and enjoyable by applying the principles and skills of program management in this book.

See how program management differs from project management. Build trust and credibility by building relationships, sharing information, and communicating effectively. Construct efficient decision-making and governance structures, with openness and clear responsibilities. Conduct more effective and enjoyable meetings. Hold the right kind of meeting for the matters to be discussed: text, phone, video, or face-to-face. Develop release lifecycles, including release planning, schedules, and go/no-go decisions, and keep on schedule. Create and manage an effective changes process. Use your bug tracker to better understand and manage the bugs and feature requests of your project. Make decisions that get buy-in from all concerned.

Develop processes that serve your open source project instead of making the project serve the process.

Table of contents

• Program Management for Open Sourc e Projects