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Add outsourced development ecosystem pattern
This patterns defines an existing problem in large corporations that are highly outsourced.
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## Title
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Outsourced Development Ecosystem
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## Patlet
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The burdens of existing contracts in an outsourced environment constraints the success of the
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InnerSource initiative. Outsourced companies may see this as a risky situation as they have to
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way to share knowledge, resources, and expertise with competitors within the mother company.
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The legal contracts typically forces to develop software in a very specific and silo-ed way.
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Redefining these rules and allowing outsourced companies would bring a more InnerSource-friendly
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way of working.
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## Problem
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Current outsourced environments in large corporations prevent those suppliers to work in an
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InnerSource way. This includes a transparent, collaborative, and community-oriented way.
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Beyond the implications of the cultural change, and process focus, most of the limitations are
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given by the existing legal framework that forces the outsourced development to charge a fee
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per hour and within a very specific project. There are not specific agreements to allow
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a collaborative way of working across the organization and across outsourced companies or contractors.
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## Context
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Large corporation with a big variety of outsourced companies and contractors that produce part
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of the code base of this company. Each company or contractor has its own legal contract in place
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that states the goals, the pricing schema, and the expected outcome and output for the organization.
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No collaboration happens at the outsourced company or contractor level and each of them are working
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in a silo-based mode with no interactions with others, but the mother company.
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## Forces
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* Legal teams and outsourced companies trying to avoid risk exposure and responsibilities.
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* Legal implications and responsibilities when something goes wrong.
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* SLAs in place forcing behaviors.
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* Managers losing control of the situation by having more collaboration across companies borders
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## Solutions
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* Governance model:
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* Better definition of who owns the code and the data produced and if possible owned by the
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mother company.
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* Definition of checks and balances of who is responsible for what action (RACI) and SLAs against PRs.
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* Definition of tools and processes so suppliers do not bring extra complexity to other suppliers.
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* Flexibility in the legal contracts to allow them to contribute with other companies,
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even when they are competitors.
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* Declaration of the supplier with other suppliers.
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* Onboarding new suppliers.
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* Relationship across developers.
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* Budget management.
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* Good practices should be enforced in the contracts with those companies or contractors.
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As an example:
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* Good documentation practices.
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* Code should be hosted in a collaborative platform every company and contractor is able to reach
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out to it
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* State pull request / change request as the by-default way of working and communication.
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* Avoid private developments and releases of tons of lines of code, keep a transparent way of
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across companies or contractors.
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* Train the mother company POs to work with several suppliers within the same project.
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* Define clear and fair guidelines across internal outsourced companies to avoid internal friction.
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* Skill up you suppliers on InnerSource practices
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* Resources discussions may be part of the conversation at some point, be sure to define the limitations
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of their interactions within other existing projects.
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## Resulting Context
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Outsourced companies and contractors are safe to collaborate with other competitors as collaboration
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rules are clear, common processes and tools are in place, and the legal framework of each participant
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allows to move into this direction.
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## Author(s) (optional)
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## Acknowledgments (optional)
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