InnerSourceCommons
[Pattern Draft] Hive Mind
One other more general thought about this pattern: is this issue something that you want to solve on the organization level (e.g. submitting entirely new product ideas), or on the team/repo level (e.g. submitting new feature ideas that may not be fully thought out).
The pattern currently uses examples that seem to stem from both of these areas, it seems?
I've made a lot of edits, not entirely happy with it yet but have committed it as a WIP for further feedback. Thank you @spier and @NewMexicoKid for your input.
"Celebrate WIP" could be another title for this pattern.
One thing that I found interesting: started reading the new Solution section and immediately thought "this sounds like ChatGPT". Then I saw that it indeed was. So apparently it does have some recognizable traits?
Curious what you asked ChatGPT to get this output?
@spier I started out with this prompt:
I'm writing an InnerSource Pattern called Hive Mind to motivate people in an org to "ask for help" Often in corporations, there's a strong need to release a finished idea into the open. But here in the InnerSource Commons, even a vague intuition can be expressed, with others in the community contributing to help make it whole, or discrediting it.
When implementing InnerSource or even open source, one should be encouraged to open up early on to elicit feedback from other participants in the community, treating the community as a "hive mind".
On a single-repo-level, here some things I can think of (but not sure if that is what you are after):
- creating an issue on a repo, describing an idea for how to fix a problem or implement a feature (without a strong attachment to an exact implementation, and also without a commitment to actually do it i.e. just exploring what is possible)
- opening a PR with the bare minimum to be needed to explain an idea (sometimes it is easier to show what you mean in code than in text (i.e. the PR has unfinished tests, missing docs, etc)
also a key message is instead of looking for ways forward by themselves, practitioners should just ask their respective communities for suggestions on how to move forward.
It seems in many organizations the culture is to solve a problem by yourself, or in a team, but not so much to do so in the open, bringing in participants and interested parties from far and wide.
the pattern will solve this problem.
Ask me questions you need to help me write the pattern, I will then ask you to generate it one section at a time
Then I refined the draft by commenting it and telling it to add text. Finally I asked it to rewrite the Solution as prose.
"Celebrate WIP" could be another title for this pattern.
I want this to develop into more cases where it's useful to reach out early. I think there are other cases such as "seeking help early" that also work and should be incorporated, which is why I used the "hive mind" using others as an extension of your mind I think really works as an analogy, therefore the hive mind title.
I will rewrite to add this aspect as well
Quick technical note:
I don't know why the gitbook-generation GitHub Action runs are failing on this branch. Looks like I might have introduced some issue on the main branch that somehow is impacting the GHA runs here. I cannot quite explain this yet.
Sorry about this hiccup. Will look for a way to fix this.
Had to try the image generators now :)
Some Inputs I tried:
- A hive mind. many individual pieces working together to achieve something. May contain bees. It should not look like a superhero.
- many super cute bees that are collaborating, as if they had a shared brain. not comic style
The first ones were all superhero style. I tried to get versions without bees but it didn't work. This needs more work 🤣
This might go into a more useful direction
many comic-style humans sitting in small with different shapes and sizes. all of these rooms are within a human head.
If this pattern is about "risk taking" as well, then there is an interesting quote in this story about Panasonic:
... newly established the Risk Taker Award to recognize those who had worked on technically difficult projects even if they resulted in failure.
Hey @mishari.
Sorry about all the notification noise that you must have received from this PR. I have been testing something related to a GitHub Action that did not run correctly on this PR, hence all those last test commits that I did.
Hope you don't mind :)
@mishari @fioddor one general question about this pattern: Is this something that you have seen in action somewhere during your consulting work, or how did this come about?
Also please see the open comments on the PR.
As this pattern is still in Initial state, let's decide together what is "good enough" for the time being, so that we can get it merged into the mainline.
And as always: Thank you for contributing and sharing your knowledge here!
@mishari @fioddor one general question about this pattern: Is this something that you have seen in action somewhere during your consulting work, or how did this come about?
Yes, I see it often in organizations that are Silo'd, when they communicate it's often highly filtered.
Also please see the open comments on the PR.
Noted
As this pattern is still in Initial state, let's decide together what is "good enough" for the time being, so that we can get it merged into the mainline.
I'll look into the comments and get back to you.
And as always: Thank you for contributing and sharing your knowledge here!
🎉