Managing contributions in an open source project

A presentation at MautiCon 2020 by Ruth Cheesley

The great thing about open source is that everyone can contribute. However, this poses a challenge: how to handle the ever-increasing flow of ideas, code contributions and more?

In 30 minutes, Ruth Cheesley and Dennis Ameling will walk you through their experiences being in Mautic’s Product Team. The following topics will be covered:

Human perspective

  • What skill sets are needed to form an effective Product Team?
  • How to prioritize feature ideas and make sure they actually get realized?
  • How to deal with time constraints when contributing to open source?
  • How to deal with proposals or contributions that don’t fit with the vision for the project?
  • How to deal with inappropriate behavior?

Technical perspective

  • The importance of automated tests in accepting code contributions
  • The benefits of an efficient CI (Continuous Integration) pipeline
  • Efficiently preparing work items for developers of different levels (beginner/intermediate/advanced)
  • Reviewing code contributions (PRs) and the technical knowledge/experience needed for that

Video