## Title

Managing Capacity for Reviewing Contributions

## Patlet

Reviewing InnerSource contributions takes time and effort. This should be reflected in capacity planning, especially for larger contributions. Expectations and available capacity should be transparent so that contributors understand when their contributions will be reviewed and, if accepted, released.

## Problem

Large InnerSource contributions are causing delays to other work in the team and/or contributions are taking longer to be released than expected. Reviewing contributions may be significant invisible work, not tracked in a team's Agile development process.

## Story

An application is built by a number of teams, each with different areas of responsibility. They work on each other's areas of the codebase via InnerSource on a regular basis.

The team responsible for the build process for the JavaScript bundles received a major pull request, changing how dependencies were bundled. This PR introduced a new build time dependency, a new structure to the deployed JavaScript bundles, and touched 503 files, with 6,699 lines of code added and 2,828 lines of code deleted. A contribution of this size required significant time to code review, test, and ensure the team understood the new tooling and structure introduced.

Normally, InnerSource contributions would be reviewed ad-hoc, but the team estimated that this review process would take days rather than hours. Reviewing this PR would have delayed the team's other work, so the team raised this with the team lead, project manager, and product manager, to prioritize this work against other work. Time was set aside to review this contribution at a future date.

This process was formalized in the team:

* Larger contributions have a ticket created on the team's backlog and included in prioritization discussion alongside other tickets.
* The contributor will be informed of the priority call and given an estimate as to when it will be reviewed and released.
* Smaller contributions can still be reviewed ad-hoc.

## Context

* Host team of a successful InnerSource project are finding it difficult to review contributions, especially large contributions.
* They do not want to disrupt their team's other work, but also want to support contributions by reviewing/releasing them in a timely fashion.

## Forces

* Contributors expect timely feedback on their contributions
* Host team are expected to deliver other work alongside reviewing contributions
* Missing communication between contributors and host team on expectations/lead time for contributions to be reviewed/released
* Tension in prioritizing InnerSource contributions against other work
* Contributors already strive to make small PRs in line with Agile, InnerSource, and Continuous Delivery principles, but find instances where larger PRs are unavoidable

## Solutions

* Contributors are encouraged to give the host team early visibility of larger contributions (e.g. via GitHub Issues, draft PRs, [RFCs](../2-structured/transparent-cross-team-decision-making-using-rfcs.md), or informal discussions) and are made aware that not doing so could delay review of their contribution
* Reviewing larger contributions is tracked in the team's ticketing system/bug tracker (e.g. Jira, GitHub issues)
* Host team is given time to review larger contributions in team capacity planning
* Reviewing contributions is prioritized against other work (e.g. in sprint planning)
* Host team communicate their capacity for reviewing contributions, the priority of contributions, and an estimate of when a contribution will be reviewed/released
* Host team has a service level objective (SLO) (e.g. 2 working days) for providing initial feedback to new contributions
* Smaller contributions are still reviewed ad-hoc; the team may have guidelines on what they consider to be a smaller contribution (e.g. review should take less than an hour)

## Resulting Context

Host team understands the overhead of reviewing large contributions and is given capacity to do so. Project manager and product managers are better able to plan, estimate, and track other work in the team by accounting for the time taken to review InnerSource contributions. Contributors understand when their contribution will be reviewed and released, and how long before the host team will provide initial feedback.

Smaller PRs are still reviewed ad-hoc, minimising overhead and unnecessary additional process.

There may still be conflict in prioritising contribution reviews, especially if the host team is overburdened with other work. This only works if contributions are valued by the decision makers in the team's planning process.

## Known Instances

- BBC iPlayer & Sounds

## Status

Initial

## Author(s)

Tom Sadler

## Acknowledgments

Clare Dillon
Sebastian Spier
Guilherme Dellagustin
Michael Basil
Bill Westfall
