Open Source Workflow and Infrastructure

Decentralized and distributed open source development utilizing community-based production requires thoughtful communication, orchestrated tooling, and defined governance models. The skillful execution of these elements can lead to a project that incorporates code, ideas, and creativity of a distributed set of expertise that often have competing interests and motivations. In this micro-course, students will study the various types of open source communities, their governance models, and how they utilize defined workflows and tooling (infrastructure) to keep their communities connected and collaborating. At the end of this course students will apply these learnings to design a suite of infrastructure and tooling to support an open source project and community.

Students will learn about design and development methodologies, and workflows that support the advantages of peer to peer, highly collaborative, iterative production in the production of open, distributed, and community-driven software. Without appropriate processes and methods, collective software development can turn into a mess. Open source development processes and methods are at the core of quality and organizational managers need the knowledge and understanding of open development to make informed decisions.

By the end of this micro-course, students will be able to:

1. Identify Open Source community types and their governance models.
   
   
2. Articulate how the infrastructure and workflows support the community.
   
   
3. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of an infrastructure model for a given project.
   
   
4. Develop a maturity model and improvement timeline for an Open Source project.
   
   
5. Design and detail a suite of tooling, workflows, and models to create infrastructure for a new or existing open source project.

Visit the Open Source Technology Management program webpage to learn about other program offerings.