Ep-20
[00:00:00] Venia: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is chaos, the chaos community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health, elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the community health analytics, open source software or short chaos project to wherever you like to listen.
[00:00:22] Welcome to this episode. My name is I man, and I am actually going to be hosting as somewhat unique conversation. we only have one guest today and I am incredibly excited cause we are going to be exploring a tool, a rubric. Of sorts, that has really caught the eye of a lot of people here at chaos.
[00:00:45] But before we do get into that tool, we've got a little bit of a story for you. So I'm just going to jump right into it and, introduce our guest. Would you mind introducing yourself, Rob? 
[00:00:59] Rob Underwood: [00:00:59] Thanks, Vinnie. I appreciate [00:01:00] it. first of all, thrilled to be here. the podcast is great. I, I'm super interested in the topic of metrics and measurement in general.
[00:01:09]I know we'll get into it, but going back to, earlier in my career, I did a lot of work around a methodology called six Sigma and, which is really focused on, measurement of processes and, looking at root cause analysis. and, so this whole topic is really interesting to me. So thank you for having me really.
[00:01:28] Happy to be here. so my name is Rob Underwood, Brooklyn, Robyn, Twitter. I, am the chief development officer for  the FinTech open source foundation. and so our mission is to expand the adoption and use of open source practices. tools, methodologies, within financial services. and first foremost, just historically our focus has been capital markets.
[00:01:57]so investment banking. and so as you can probably [00:02:00] imagine, I'm sure. Well, I know our focus here is going to be on metrics. I'm sure as you can imagine, there's a lot of things that we also have to think about around culture, because historically, the cultures of an investment bank and the sort of ethics and culture of.
[00:02:14] Open source communities may not at first seem like the most obvious, match. hopefully we'll get into a little bit about how that's changed and why that, why they are. but yeah, we're here to help, large investment banks and other financial institutions collaborate in the open transparently using open source code and practices.
[00:02:33]and as you can probably imagine, banks and financial institutions like to measure things. And so measurement and numbers tend to be something they focus on. And so we have to think a lot about how we measure things within our foundation. 
[00:02:52] Venia: [00:02:52] That's kind of music to my ears as a measurement marketer, but even more so as an anthropologist, my background.
[00:03:00] [00:03:00] So whenever I hear there's a focus on culture, before there's a focus on numbers that just makes my little heart sing. 
[00:03:07] Rob Underwood: [00:03:07] Great. Good. Yeah. Well, it definitely, it's a, I mean, really at the end of the day, it's it? Anything is about people and humans, right. And so, you know, w we're. I think we're here to create cultures and organizational structures that hopefully bring out the best in people and enable people to be wildly successful.
[00:03:26] And, all of the other stuff is sort of on top of that. 
[00:03:30] Venia: [00:03:30] Absolutely. and I guess before we get into the tool, kind of in the name of that culture, I'd really like to, know a little bit more about that. Can you delve in, into the culture and the environments, that you built this tool in, Venice?
[00:03:47] Rob Underwood: [00:03:47] Yeah. So, so the, I think one of the things that I've, so I've been, I started, at Finos in. I'm doing some consulting for four Finos [00:04:00] actually Finos at the time was the symphony software foundation. I'm happy to get into a little bit of the history of the foundation. but as the symphony software foundation was being reborn it's FENOs, I did consulting for about four or five months, and then I joined as the.
[00:04:16]director of programs. I know we'll talk today a little bit about what a program means or meant to us. but, one of the things I've been kind of blown away by, and I was kind of, was unexpected to me was the degree to which, my preconceptions of how. Developers and, Product managers and others within investment banks, how they would sort of behave and behave towards each other was wrong.
[00:04:50] So just as a little bit of background on me, I did, just to provide some context to that comment. I did 12 and a half years of management [00:05:00] consulting. six years at. KPMG is KPMG was becoming bearing point. And then, six, six and a half years at Deloitte, in Deloitte consulting strategy practice.
[00:05:11] And so, especially at Deloitte, just in the vertical, I worked in, we worked with, I worked in the TMT industry and that included the financial data providers. some of whom are. our fitness members now, but organizations that are financial data providers like Bloomberg and S and P, and. so I had, you know, some awareness and familiarity with financial services and financial services, data and financial services, software development, but not necessarily at Deloitte with open source development in that context.
[00:05:50]and then between my time at Deloitte and. my time, really when I got involved with Finos, I did a bunch of work around, ed tech and [00:06:00] education. I was the CTO of a graduate school. did a bunch of work around expanding computer science education, socially in New York city. and so I came to Finos.
[00:06:10]sort of with a lot of kind of preconceptions that, Oh, well, you know, it's going to be a very rigid culture. very hierarchical. how is it even possible that a developer from Goldman Sachs, you know, what would be her motivations for wanting to. Work together with, you know, her counterpart or a similar somebody with similar role at JP Morgan.
[00:06:33] Why would they do that? in just a very sort of, I imagine frankly, kind of a real bro culture, which I have been pleasantly surprised to really not encounter or see very much. and, yeah, so, so from that sort of culture standpoint, I just have been pleasantly surprised at the degree to which people really want to work together.
[00:06:56] So that sort of begs the question well, okay. So why would they [00:07:00] want to work together and know the answer is that, and this is true in many industries, but especially in financial services, banks do business with each other all the time. and, whether it's, an IPO where, you know, several investment banks may be working together on an IPO or a big, bond issuance, or some other sort of deal.
[00:07:20] Banks compete fiercely, but they have the act we have to work together all the time. Furthermore, they work in it's a highly regulated industry. So whether those are European regulations or regulations in Asia or regulations in the United States or in South Korea, Erica, they have to continue form to a set of regulations from regulators.
[00:07:40]and so they have a lot of common challenges in terms of. Of, dealing with those regulations. So there's all of these opportunities for mutualization. and I think, one of the important tenants of open source, and I love to hear your take on this two is it's this idea of the comments that we all have [00:08:00] a duty and a responsibility to maintain the comments, right?
[00:08:04] So we, you know, You know, not to get political, I get a little political. I think we all have a duty to the commons of maintaining the health of the planet. Right. So if we don't have access to clean water and we don't have access to clean air and, we don't have, an earth that can succeed human life.
[00:08:27] Well, that's a problem. And so we all have a duty to. Be good stewards of the planet. I think so. That's my big comment. Yeah, 
[00:08:40] Venia: [00:08:40] exactly. I actually have a, analogy that I really like to use, which has become really important with the internet of things in the opensource community, but even more so in marketing as, SAS stacks have started to build and build, and open source has started to permeate these proprietary, small business, tech [00:09:00] companies where, Back before, pre social media and a pre 2014 SAS stack era.
[00:09:08]the typical software process in proprietary business and marketing was largely, we're going to create a marketing suite that solves all your problems. And the CEO was essentially the person at the bar head of a very large thoughts.
[00:09:32] Sorry. That was something that I couldn't avoid. Cause it was an alarm. Cause I normally wake up right now. yeah. And in our, sorry, I'm gonna start over.
[00:09:50] Yeah. And in the MarTech marketing vertical, at least I like to use a specific analogy. if you think about before the era of [00:10:00] SAS stacks and these really a small business, hyper centered tech companies who were coming up to achieve one problem, before the social media era. The way that a lot of those technologies was being built was largely proprietary.
[00:10:15] And, the CEO was that the bull head of this large ship, and the idea was 
[00:10:21] Rob Underwood: [00:10:21] we're going to produce 
[00:10:23] Venia: [00:10:23] a company that has a marketing suite. That's so all your problems, and they would do everything. They'd have an email suite and CRM, a CMS. they do everything. Customer relationships, content management events.
[00:10:38] And by and large, yeah. The company would get strung out because it was one person trying to manage a cruise ship and the food would be like a cruise ship, email software had bugs, but it didn't matter. You just had to work through it. It would have all of these issues and platform wasn't specialized and you just picked your poison.
[00:11:00] [00:11:00] And now as open sources started to permeate these proprietary sources and hyperscale Pacific, us schools of thought have started to grow and develop. now that's changed and instead of, having a massive Titanic. that is just mediocre. It doesn't end. Well, now we have like a native full fleet where we have a captain of a variable, the small ship that does email marketing.
[00:11:30] And he is very tightly connected with this other captain of the ship that does a customer relationship management software. And she is absolutely connected to this other guy that does. Really great events management and the SAS docs actually integrate and connect, because they've taken that from open source and recognize that building the best thing they can with the one thing they're good at, and then [00:12:00] collaborating with the other people that are building the best thing they can with the one thing that are good at.
[00:12:06] Rob Underwood: [00:12:06] And 
[00:12:07] Venia: [00:12:07] it sounds to me like that's where banks. Have kind of taken the edge, started to communicate and talk about building these bridges and this infrastructure that creates common ground and allows for that collaboration. 
[00:12:25] Rob Underwood: [00:12:25] That's right. And so, you know, and going back to, you know, when I first got into consulting back in 2000, Yeah, I was that's.
[00:12:35] That's where I was word was in marketing technology and in CRM. And so back in that day, the big players were, Oracle, SAP CRM, and the new kid on the block at the time with CBO. And then, you know, a few years later Salesforce started to come. That was really new. That was a really radical right.
[00:12:56] And Salesforce was interesting because. the other three, [00:13:00] largely speaking, I'm generalizing, but largely speaking, I'm talking about the early two thousands now. So to the CIO or the CTO and the Salesforce strategy of time was, I'm just going to go right to the head of sales and sell to her, him.
[00:13:17] And, but that tension, which you described so well of sort of this, do I want a sweet. or do I want a, you know, sort of a best of breed model, that was always something that we were sort of going back and forth on. and I remember my clients at both, you know, KPMG varying point and Deloitte were always sort of balancing, but like you said, I say it's only really, I wouldn't say just now, but I would say in the last half decade or so with the sort of API effication, if you will, of everything.
[00:13:51] That this ability, like you say, to be able to take these different parts and. And constitute them in different ways. I mean, that's what, frankly [00:14:00] makes it an interesting time to launch a startup, right? Because you can take all of these different pieces and sort of cobble them together and create something very quickly.
[00:14:10] And the other thing, you know, just reflecting on what you were saying is, so one of my I've been really blessed in my career to have some great mentors and one of my mentors that, At KPMG bearing point, this guy named Tim Jones, he's now the head of global consulting and he's amazed at what he's done with his career.
[00:14:29]he used to draw this triangle and it's not a unique triangle, but the triangle was, if you can imagine, at the bottom of the triangle. So the largest portion of a triangle is imagine that the wider part is at the bottom. And the tip this at the top, would be the stuff that is.
[00:14:45] Industry, agnostic. So just stuff like accounts payable, right? So how you do accounts payable? There's some degree of variation from industry to industry, but largely speaking, how you [00:15:00] do accounts payable is going to be not all that different from industry to industry, but then the layer above it was the industry specific, but not differentiating pieces.
[00:15:11] Then only that tippy top piece. Would be the part that, would be the area for actual competitive differentiation in the marketplace. and I thought I've always, that's always stuck with me and I've used it a ton. And, I think that's that idea of sort of thinking about, wow, there's so much of this stuff that we do in common.
[00:15:37] In the same way and we all benefit if we just. You know, figure out a way to do it in a common mutualized way, is really powerful. So, yeah, 
[00:15:48] Venia: [00:15:48] and I love, where that's going, especially in a financial sector, which I'm surprised to hear that, the environment that you're coming into this financial sector for is already primed for that [00:16:00] collaboration already making connection in bridges, between the different.
[00:16:04] Power players, so to speak. And I'm also surprised to find that the culture is surprisingly amenable, from what I'm getting out of your conversation to change and diversity and connection, it's kind of moved away from what you. Initially described, I believe as a bro culture, 
[00:16:24]
[00:16:24] which is really awesome.
[00:16:25] And I think that is probably, 
[00:16:28] Rob Underwood: [00:16:28] I would just say, I mean, on that, another thing I would say is, you know, and again, you know, regardless of how one feels about, you know, and again, you know, investment banking and whatnot, but one of the things that I've been blown away by is when I walk into. Some of these investment banks, is the diversity is well, the diversity overall we'll talk.
[00:16:57] I think I hopefully we'll talk in a little bit about [00:17:00] diversity within the technology community and the developer community, the diversity overall in these banks, when you walk in, it's just, it's incredible. You just, you see people from every country. people have, you know, it just, it's a very diverse environment.
[00:17:18] It's just, I keep being struck by that when I go into these banks, again, I had this preconception can be very white, can be very male, very broey and at least what I've seen, it's, you know, you just meet people from all over the world, all sorts of different backgrounds. and, now that. that changes a little bit when you get into the developer community.
[00:17:39] And again, we'll talk about that hopefully in a little bit, because that's one of the metrics and measures that we, that was important to the tool, which we'll get into. but you know, things are changing, you know, I mean, it's it, we live in difficult days, right. And it's, it's easy to be [00:18:00] dark and cynical and sort of feel like the world's collapsing and, you know, I get there too.
[00:18:05]but you know, there is progress being made on the diversity front and on expanding access to, and we're not there yet. Definitely not there yet, but you they're there changes a foot and you know, a lot of these investment bank banks are so focused on getting the best and brightest from wherever in the world that they just can't be concerned with.
[00:18:30] That stuff, they just want the best, the brightest and the most enthusiastic and wherever folks are from, or whatever, you know, their, gender ID or their sexual orientation or their race or their, yeah. Like, that's just kind of, it's like, if you want to contribute great coming to contribute.
[00:18:48] Venia: [00:18:48] Yeah. And, I guess without further ado, that kind of describes the environment that this tool that we have been rather mysterious about. [00:19:00] So I guess now it's time to introduce it 
[00:19:02] Rob Underwood: [00:19:02] and 
[00:19:03] Venia: [00:19:03] very excited. what we have here to me, what it looks like, is a tool that kind of gauges how the power users, Are dealing with diversity inclusion, status, connection, and allows us to specifically select metrics that kind of tell the power users and, the people in charge, how they're doing that sounds.
[00:19:33] Rob Underwood: [00:19:33] Yeah. Yeah. let me give you some framing or the tool. so the tool that you're referring to is our, we call it our board reporting and program health check. Now I need to provide a little bit of context that, the concept of a program. Is something that we have gotten rid of. So we're very much, and that's why I was really excited to have this conversation because I think there's a ton to learn from you and from your community is as we, we kind of go through this [00:20:00] transition period.
[00:20:00] So, but it is, it was a S is a rubric, in order to, Present a kind of a set of criteria. We use three categories target, which is sort of expected operations at risk and intervention required. I assume that we'll, we can probably, then you put the link to this stuff in the description to the podcast so people can take a look at it.
[00:20:25]and then there's some different dimensions that we measure. so we measure diversity and viability roadmap and resources. Hygiene and operations. Quality and security and growth and adoption. And then we have specific metrics that are associated with each one of those dimensions. Now I said that we've gotten rid of programs.
[00:20:47] So let me describe what a program is or was so within Finos we have, approximately 42, 43, we got some contributions of new [00:21:00] projects, literally this week, projects that are either. incubating, which means they're preparing to get to a point where the code can be designated as sort of ready for prime time, ready for production or active.
[00:21:12] We also have a number of archive projects, but let's just set those aside for now. So, in the first few years, my, as I mentioned, my title was director of programs. and for the first few years we organize those. Projects as 40 projects into program. So we grouped the projects together and we had a federated structure in our foundation governance.
[00:21:39] So the governance of our program of our foundation is that we have a board. and I should also mention that we. We recently became a part of the Linux foundation. So we're now a directed fund. So what was a board with a kind of, you know, real fiduciary responsibilities now as a governing board [00:22:00] for the directed fund, but sort of, kind of a, an operational detail.
[00:22:04]so, but we had the board, so the board sets the direction and vision as a board, does. Then we had a, then we obviously have our director gab, and then, you know, the other, you know, members of the leadership team who, you know, are responsible for executing on the vision and direction of the board, but.
[00:22:23] Critically we had this middle layer of the program leadership and the program leadership was responsible for, stewardship of the projects within those programs. well, the fast forward, what we found in the two years with that. That middle layer of governance while it sounded great. Ended up feeling like a little too much bureaucracy, I think.
[00:22:48]and so we've very recently moved to the new model where we're, it's just project. So the 40 projects and, you know, then obviously we have the [00:23:00] foundation leadership and then the board, so the. The metrics that we're going to talk about in the context of this rubric tool. we're very actively transitioning the use of those metrics, but they're still important metrics and they're still metrics that we are using and will continue to use.
[00:23:18] I just wanted to find a little bit of that context. 
[00:23:19] Venia: [00:23:19] Yeah. And for our listeners, this is definitely one of those moments where, the rubric, is going to be in the show notes down below. And it's definitely something you need to see to believe it's very impressive. it seems like there's a very, specific philosophy here.
[00:23:37]that's focused primarily on responsibility and control. Over a very difficult to manage things in larger companies and larger associations and larger online communities. so if you'd be willing to take a little bit of time, if you're listening to this podcast in a car, don't do it now. do it in a little bit, do it later, but go to [00:24:00] podcast.chaos.community.
[00:24:02]in order to find this episode, go into the show notes. Grab the rubric, take a look at it and, looking at it, it seems like something that you can absolutely adapt into your own open source community organization, or anything you're really affiliated with. So we definitely read, recommend taking a look at it.
[00:24:22] And I would like to just summarize what we're looking at here. just to make sure, cause we kind of got over it a little bit, but I want to make sure that it's all in one spot. 
[00:24:32] Rob Underwood: [00:24:32] And let me mention briefly you said car. So as a new Yorker, let me just mention or on the subway or on a bicycle? my good friend, Sarah does a wonderful podcast called the war on cars, which talks about the.
[00:24:46] There are many reasons why we need to try to reduce our dependency on cars, to the aforementioned climate crisis. I referenced. So you might be on a bicycle, you might be on the subway, or you may in fact be in a car, but yeah, definitely that's described the [00:25:00] door. 
[00:25:00] Venia: [00:25:00] Definitely a good catch. but what we're looking at here is a table, a rubric, where on the X axis, we have a set of.
[00:25:10]criteria, where were we have target or meets expectations and then at risk and intervention required. And then over on the far, right. We actually have an entire column that we're probably gonna spend the lion's share, of discussing this tool on which is metrics. that seemed very clearly pinpointed to answer those questions.
[00:25:33] And then on the Y axis, we have a set of a desired yeah. Comes that I assume is like the target. that we're trying to get your board members to control, and that is diversity and visibility. the roadmap and the resources, hygiene and operations, quality and security, and then lastly, growth and adoption.
[00:25:57] And then across that, we just had, it [00:26:00] looks like you have developed over the course of the philosophy, what it actually means in each of those categories to be. Meeting the expectations or not meeting those expectations based on clear metrics. so I just want to make sure that we read iterated what this rubric looks like for all of our listeners on the podcast.
[00:26:20] And the thing that I'm very excited to talk about right now is what the philosophy was. When you were building this, what the problem was and how this rubric really solve that problem. so I guess my most important question is what was the philosophy of the hind selecting the metrics you 
[00:26:40] Rob Underwood: [00:26:40] did?
[00:26:41] Yeah, so, so, so I view, I view our role. And when I say our, I mean, gab, our executive director Pasha, our incredible COO James, our director of community Mauer, director of [00:27:00] infrastructure. I Tanya Aaron, Al myself, all of us who collectively, work on, on, who are  as well as all of our colleagues from Linux foundation as really being a bridge builder.
[00:27:11]of cultures and, you know, again, something we've talked about a little earlier. and so when I came to the role, I sorta put my old Deloitte at on and said, okay. So if I were delivering this thing, As a Deloitte engagement, right? if we were out building several hundred dollars an hour and I was flying across, you know, a continent every week and we were doing a strategy engagement, and I was putting together a set of KPIs for a client.
[00:27:49] What would be their expert? What would a financial services client that I was serving at Deloitte be looking for and what are they sort of expecting and [00:28:00] why I thought that was, is important and why I think that continues to be important is that, well, I, I should just say, I think, you know, we have consulting organizations and service providers within our community that are with our membership.
[00:28:13]You know, there is a little bit of, if not outright competition, a sort of question of, an implicit question at least of will. if I'm at a bank and I need to launch a new software product, why wouldn't I go higher? You know, Whomever I consulting firm to go deliver this project versus going and sort of building a team to deliver this as open source.
[00:28:41] And so part of this was thinking about this in terms of how do I put our open source projects, give them the same level of Polish or, structure. That would be something that if some, if [00:29:00] somebody had to evangelize for open source within their investment bank to other people who have maybe have no idea what open sources have no idea what, Maybe they're not even technologists, maybe they're they work in legal or compliance or procurement or some other area that they can have the types of metrics, maybe not the actual metrics, but the types of rigor and metrics that they generally expect of projects for which they're hiring an external consultant or even just internal projects.
[00:29:31] So the motivation and philosophy of this was how do we start to put. Open source within this industry, which is highly regulated, very focused on numbers, very focused on money, very focused on measurement. How do we put open source on equal footing with other projects within the industry? So that was the animating philosophy first and foremost.
[00:29:56]and so we think a lot [00:30:00] about, The actual, like atomic units of what we're measuring and then thinking about, you know, different ratios or measurement over time or month over month or quarter over quarter measurements, because that's the thing that banks look at. And so that was the thought and, you know, and I'm.
[00:30:22] I'm probably dating myself. I'm 48 and not spring chicken. but you know, I, my, some of my background is in six Sigma. And, you know, for those of you who don't know what six Sigma is, you may have only heard about it. I sort of jokingly referred to, there was a show on NBC. I'll think of it that used to joke about they used to call it Sigma six because it was NBC at the time was owned by GE and GE was a big user of 16, but at its simplest six, Sigma is about, it is all about measuring.
[00:30:59]and [00:31:00] using measurement to identify causes of problems. Actually, a lot of the six Sigma stuff really goes all the way back to some of the, Japanese, quality control techniques from the seventies. And even before that. and so that was it was just like, how do we put open source on and on even footing with other types of projects?
[00:31:21] And that was, you know, in terms of the philosophy or motivation, that was really where it started. 
[00:31:26] Venia: [00:31:26] Absolutely. and it sounds like that philosophy has really found itself, on a very solid footing, a very solid ground, with this metric. So I'm really excited to ask what are the metrics? 
[00:31:39] Rob Underwood: [00:31:39] Yes.
[00:31:40] Yeah, sure. So, so this is, let's talk about that. Some of the dimensions, and again, I should point out and hopefully we'll put it in the description because you will also see what we're describing in this program. Health check, you'll see that these criteria also [00:32:00] present themselves in the criteria that we use.
[00:32:03] To help evaluate projects as they move across the life cycle. So we have, you know, we are life cycles of projects. So we actually have a new, life cycle stage called formation. We have a very large. Project that Goldman Sachs is contributing called a lawyer, which is kind of our best example of a project that's currently information it's about to be transitioned into, incubating a once it's open source, which hopefully will be about the time this podcast comes out.
[00:32:33] Or maybe soon after, So we have the formation base, which is like a, really a, Hey, let's just kind of get our ideas together for how we're going to open source this and maybe we'll run it. But then we have this incubating, a state age of our life cycle and our active stage. So you'll see this sort of permeate in terms of our criteria there.
[00:32:53] So anyways, to your question, so the first dimension, and again, Hopefully folks have gotten off the subway or [00:33:00] park their car or gotten off their bike. And they're looking at this. So the first dimension is diversity and viability. So there are a couple of different dimensions to it. The dimension of diversity and viability.
[00:33:15] So one is, whether it was a program or now even a project is we want. Diversity of organizations represented in the project. So in the maintainers, right? So many of our projects really, mostly, almost all of our projects are controlled by one organization. Right? So an example perspective, this really, interesting, data visualization library, built in WebAssembly contributed by JP Morgan.
[00:33:45] Right? So. No, it was already open source, by the way, just if people are addressed, we use largely speaking the Apache 2.0 license. So it was already open source. They decided to contribute it into Finos, but by and large, most of their contributors, not all, but most of their [00:34:00] contributors and all of their maintainers were JP Morgan.
[00:34:03] So for us, we're starting to look at when does the first maintainer who's not JP Morgan. Get added to the role, right? Because for us, it's really important to see that there's diversity of organizations in the maintain. Right. so that is one of the metrics number of you'll see, number of organizations represented on the PMC.
[00:34:24] See that was the program management committee, but now as we're transitioning to projects only. We're looking at, you know, what's the diversity of organizations that are represented on the, on, in the project maintainer group. so that's, it's a really important thing to us is we want to see diversity in, in the maintainers, from an organizational perspective, another metric, yeah.
[00:34:46] Is the, percent of women, people who identify as a woman. within our active participants. and we have, I have a, we have a definition of what an active participant is basically looks at, [00:35:00] the trailing six months and some different types of activity, that sort of count for active participation where we're actually starting to call that contributes to the number of women who have, who are part of the contributor.
[00:35:13] Contribution community. Now this is a metric which has been more difficult. So the difficulty, and I'd love to hear your take. And, you know, I would love to hear what other people in the community take is. Do people really want to be counting? I mean, is that something you want to count? Right? Do you want an open source community to be sort of doing a head count of people who, whose gender identity is female and.
[00:35:41]that's just tricky, but nonetheless, we kept the metric there because we just wanted to say, Hey, this is important to us. And, and I should mention, we very recently, started up a new, diversity task force led by our [00:36:00] former chair, Allie, from city and, And so they're looking at all of this too.
[00:36:05]but we wanted to just say, Hey, this is important to us. And so if you look at the rubric, we've given ourselves the goal of saying our target expected option patients is that women represent 50% of our active participants. Now I will cut to the chase and say, we're not hitting that.
[00:36:23]But it doesn't mean that's, that it doesn't mean that shouldn't be a, that we aspire to and that we work towards. our at risk criteria is less than 50% of the programs are now projects, active participants are members of traditionally underrepresented demographic groups. Right. So that's important to us too.
[00:36:44] So, you know, I was talking earlier about the diversity that I observe in. And investment banks. And when I walk in and, it is tremendous, that said, within technology teams and [00:37:00] development teams, while it's getting better, it's, you know, no different in technology teams on wall street than it is frankly, out in Santa Clara, California.
[00:37:09] Yeah. That, you know, it's. Still lot of white male. and, and so, so, but we still have to state it in my opinion explicitly to say, Hey, that's not where we want to be. we want our own open source community to reflect the diversity of the overall community in which we live and work. and so we need to set these targets and while they may seem really aggressive, when you look at where we currently are within our team, within our technology teams, then, you know, we need to nonetheless be working on that.
[00:37:49] I think that's also why, you know, I mentioned earlier, That you know, I spent some years in education. the real way in my view to fix this is we have to, and I would [00:38:00] encourage anybody who's listening to this. If you're not already involved, get involved in the computer science movement to expand computer science in the United States and or around the world, wherever you're at, in the United States, there's, you know, there's CS for all.
[00:38:15] There's some wonderful organizations like. my friend Rashma runs an organization called girls who code and probably some folks are familiar with that black girls. Cause there's all these great organizations out there. That's really, where were we back to six Sigma. Right? If you look at the root cause it's making sure that everybody gets a chance to be exposed to technology and computer science early in their life.
[00:38:36] And that's how we're going to fix and improve our diversity. But anyways, so that's point being that we have to measure this and we have to give ourselves targets. And it might feel at times uncomfortable and it might times feel like these are aggressive, but we can't sort of like back away from this.
[00:38:54] We have to like lean in and be focused on these measures because if [00:39:00] we don't measure it, then we're not gonna know for making any improvement. 
[00:39:02] Venia: [00:39:02] Yeah. And, some possibly somewhat selfish, being a part of chaos. But, if you're listening to this and you would like to get involved, episode 11 of this exact same podcast discusses our DNI badging group, here at chaos.
[00:39:18] So if you do want to get involved in diversity and inclusion, a really great place to start would be right there. we're always willing to have you. And, that kind of wraps into, the really important aspect on our side is when you're deciding, gender is a great example. how many women do you have, engaging in and setting trends and building resources within your open source project?
[00:39:49]this rubric. Would be a really great way for you to set an idealistic goal that says we would like such and such percent, and [00:40:00] then look at the benchmark. Where are you right now? And then just put out a number, just say, okay, we're at 13%. Okay. That's a little bit low. but let's say make a target of 20.
[00:40:16] And that rubric can constantly change and be adapted to your open source community. And it sounds like a lot of what other metrics involved in this rubric are going to follow that same pattern, that same trend of just having an idealistic percentage that says we want to be here. And we are here. So let's just set a goal, set a forecast and work toward it.
[00:40:41] Does that sound right? 
[00:40:42] Rob Underwood: [00:40:42] Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you don't reach for the stars so to speak, I don't think, you know, building an equitable community, that's certainly be, you know, reaching for the stars. But if you don't set aggressive targets, for where you want to be, I mean, you know, it seems [00:41:00] to me that we would want a community where 50% or over 50% of the.
[00:41:04] The community should be people whose gender ID identification is women. Right? So like that seems to be sort of an obvious target to me. and, that may not be what is for early. the ratio within, you know, your average technology team, you know, whether that's in, against Santa Clara, California, or New York, but nonetheless, yeah, that's where we need to be.
[00:41:29]do you want me to talk a little bit about some of the other, dimensions on the, yeah. 
[00:41:36]Venia: [00:41:36] just real quick for all of our listeners. I know we're kind of. Pushing this a little bit hard, but this really is one of those things you need to look at. Cause you're not going to be able to go over all of the great and amazing value that this tool has to offer your communities.
[00:41:50] But there are some, particularly wonderful metrics and golden nuggets involved in this rubric. So go take a look at it again. It's podcasts. [00:42:00] Dot chaos and.community. so what are some big highlight metrics, that you're particularly excited about? 
[00:42:07] Rob Underwood: [00:42:07] Yeah, so, so another one, and it's funny, I just this week, or actually this week, my friend Steven gold balm, who's a executive director at Morgan Stanley.
[00:42:18] They just contributed. This really interesting project called more for, and, you know, check it out. well, like how we'll put the link so you can check it out. and he said to me, he said, you know, jeez, we really want to make this, project, you know, really successful. And we want to, we want to grow the community.
[00:42:37] In fact, I'll even. he said to me, I'll read you what she said. I'm looking at appropriate resourcing for ensuring a successful project. So beyond just the minimum maintenance to include things like collaboration, industry opportunities, it will help to also include standard open source tasks, irrespective of Finos like achieving public quality documentation.
[00:42:58]and so what we talked [00:43:00] about is he was looking at. How do I appropriately within Morgan Stanley plan, budget and resource for growing an open source community around more for this new project that Morgan Stanley has, has contributed. So in terms of metrics and back to the tool, one of the things that we encourage our programs to measure, and again, I will say this.
[00:43:28] Proved to be difficult. and as we make the transition to projects, you know, we'll continue to work through. It was, how many full time equivalents are dedicated to working on the previously the program or the project. So, you know, and I assume folks know, but you know, full time equivalent is just a.
[00:43:48] A way of sort of thinking about sort of just kind of separating the full dental home gives me like a 40 hour workweek. Right. So instead of just like a beating heart or just a, an abstract notion of a person, so, [00:44:00] Oh, 
[00:44:00] Venia: [00:44:00] I'm sorry. so to clarify, the metric is how many people are working. At minimum 35 to 40 hours on product 
[00:44:10] Rob Underwood: [00:44:10] it's full time equivalent.
[00:44:11] So basically it's how many units of if a unit is a 40 hour it's 40 hours. So if I have, let me do the calculation. So if there were four people. Who were spending 20 hours a week on it, open source project. I have two FTEs. Right? So it's yeah. Number of people working on the project divided by, the amount of hours.
[00:44:31] So, so the, so he was basically saying, well, how many FTEs do you think I need? and so for us, you know, that's an important thing to look at, right? So if. One of the banks contributes a project. We want to make sure. and, you know, thankfully we really don't have any examples of this, but what we want to avoid is we want to avoid the dump and run that some, an organization or a person contributes a project and they're like, good, [00:45:00] I'm done good luck.
[00:45:02] You know, we want to see that there's going to be people who are going to stay committed to that project. To being stewards of the project to growing the community, to working on diversity, to all of those different pieces. And so for us, another metric was okay. Yay. You know, you may not need to be exact, but okay.
[00:45:19] You know, Asking the lead maintainer. Now with a case of projects, how many FTS does it feel like you have working on this? Do you have enough? Let's look at your roadmap and we'll talk about that second to let's look at your roadmap. Do you, do you have what you need to deliver on this roadmap or do you need, maybe Finos has helped to start to.
[00:45:41] Spread the word like, Hey, we've got these three or four good first issues. We could use some help. we need more people to get involved. So that just level of commitment. And again, back to sort of putting open source on equal footing with other projects within an investment bank. That just goes without saying that if you're talking [00:46:00] about a large project within an investment bank, you're going to know what, how you're, how are you resourcing?
[00:46:06] Oh, Hey, we're going to go after this new. w IPO for, we want to win IPO for snowflake or whatever. And how many FTEs are we going to put on the pursuit to win the, you know, the snowflake IPO they're going to, they're going to measure that. Right. So we want to think about that. So that was another thing.
[00:46:23] And then we have a Boolean as well, which is just, have you published your roadmap? Right? Which probably seems like, well, of course you have, well, No, not always. Right. And so do you have a roadmap, like, is there a roadmap on your public Wiki or on your site? People can people understand that? if not, okay, well then let's work on it, but at least let's know if it's there.
[00:46:44] Right? So sometimes the metrics are really basic, just like a Boolean. It, you know, is there a roadmap there? but we just want to make sure that, you know, from a roadmap dimension, that projects are working to a public roadmap that they're actively supported. They have committed resources from the [00:47:00] firms that are participating.
[00:47:01]and you know, that this is going to be a successful thing. Yeah. 
[00:47:04] Venia: [00:47:04] Yeah. Do they have a strategic plan? Have they allocated both time personnel and monetary resources to achieve the plans and have they narrowed the strategy and the objectives to ensure that they're not overextending themselves across the projects that are involved?
[00:47:25] Rob Underwood: [00:47:25] Exactly another point of criteria in here. And again, hopefully folks are looking at us, which is, I will just, you know, disclaim is a little bit more provocative is we have, we have, a part of the screener that says no requirement exists for developers to create a separate work corporate get hub ID now.
[00:47:45] Let me further disclaim. We have several members that do have that requirement. Those are legal compliance decisions. Those members have made that's fine, but you know, for many developers, their get hub or [00:48:00] get lab or what, but, you know, they're, their contributions in GitHub are their resume.
[00:48:06] Right. And they bring that resume with them, from job to job from contract to contract. And, you know, the leading practice, if you will, in Silicon Valley for sure, is that. You have one GitHub ID and you sort of have that GitHub ID for life and you take all of those open source projects associated with your GitHub ID.
[00:48:26] And if you move from Google to Facebook, you don't have to go create, like, you're still that same person who made those contributions. The fact that you may still be working on those same projects when you move from Google to Facebook. Right? So the other thing we try to encourage, and again, for some of our members, this isn't something they can do, but we try to encourage.
[00:48:45] That, this philosophy of a single heartbeat, a single GitHub ID, and that you don't have to sort of be two people. one of the things that is a animating motivation for [00:49:00] Finos is that it wasn't like. You know, like Finos came along and all of a sudden banks are doing open source or developers in banks.
[00:49:09]no. They have been doing open source development for a long time. Each just, you know, what had been happening was a developer, you know, she would see, she would use this library at work, see a fix that she needed to make. Wasn't permitted to do it in her capacity as working for the investment bank. So she'd go home.
[00:49:30] And at two in the morning, you know, when she was back here in Brooklyn or whatever, she'd go and do that, you know, sort of unbeknownst to her employer, fix it right. Then go back to the bank the next day and then pull it into the project. They were working on want that we want that behavior could not happen.
[00:49:48] We want it to make, get that she can comfortably. Officially in the context, same construct of her job description. Her day to day work responsibilities at [00:50:00] the bank at the financial data provider. What happens would you be able to make, say, Hey, I want to make this fix. I'm going to, you know, fix these three lines of Haskell code.
[00:50:11] I'm going to make the, I'm gonna make a couple of commits. I'm gonna do a pull request and I'm going to do that within the capacity of my employment. And I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to, we have, we use contributor license agreements. We get into that if you'd like, but, and I'm going to, I'm going to be able to do that.
[00:50:29] So that's a, that's another big part. We feel like people are. we know that people are able to do things to participate in these communities authentically as part of their, our day to day job. We love it. That's not always the case, but we love it when it's actually written into job descriptions that they're participating in these open source community.
[00:50:50] Cause then any even further, yeah, more I'd say when we know it's tied to their incentive compensation. Right. So, You know, it's, this is wall street, [00:51:00] right. There are people, you know, money, people are there's money involved. Right. And so there are bonuses involved. and so if you're, if yeah, there's that if your economic incentives aren't aligned with you participating in an open source community, then you know, you might ask, well, if I have a choice of two tasks, What is going to further, you know, further my, you know, positioning to get the bonus I'm after.
[00:51:25] And one is fixing this bug, but it isn't gonna do anything for my bonus. Well, which one are you going to choose? And. You know, sometimes people are going to choose the thing that's going to provide the economic incentive. So, 
[00:51:38] Venia: [00:51:38] absolutely. this is absolutely amazing. I think that we could realistically have a series about this tool, but for the time being, we are toward the end of the podcast, and there are a lot of amazing metrics.
[00:51:53] On this rubric. but the most important question, for us, especially at chaos, because we focus on [00:52:00] metrics and how to measure open source, the communities, is adaptation. Of this tool. So my last question for you, just the lightning round real quick, before we get into our picks, which I'll describe here in a little bit, what is the first step aside from going to podcasts.chaos.community and looking at the report?
[00:52:22] Rob Underwood: [00:52:22] What is 
[00:52:22] Venia: [00:52:22] the first step toward, community leaders implementing and adopting this tool in their own communities? 
[00:52:33] Rob Underwood: [00:52:33] I think the first step is really figuring out ultimately what your goals are for your community before you get into metrics. Right? So, if you're animating, I use that phrase again, if you're animating motivation, is that you want to increase your velocity against your roadmap.
[00:52:56]then. That might lead [00:53:00] you towards, and you just need to bang things out. You just need to get a lot done. Then, you may be more focused on a smaller leaner team to sort of crush that work and get that done. And so you want to measure, you want to measure your velocity of work, but if you're. By contrast looking towards, well, we have a roadmap, but really more important than right now is building the community around.
[00:53:36] As we build the roadmap, then maybe I want to be more focused on some of the metrics around how many contributors I have. and I also think that. You know, it was funny. I was right before I was, we started this podcast. I was talking to my wonderful colleague, James in London, who is our director of community.
[00:53:56] We're talking about the, also the way that sort of [00:54:00] metrics can sort of, lead you in the wrong direction. Right. So, you know, one of the things that we work with or think through at Finos is so, so we obviously want. More projects. Right? Well, that's important, right? we're a foundation.
[00:54:17] We want to demonstrate growth. We want demonstrate to our membership that we're building a wider community. Certainly an important metric is projects. Okay. But we also want projects that are viable. It's goes back to the resourcing. Right. So I think another thing to think about is. What are the appropriate ratios, right?
[00:54:35] So a very active debate we're having in real time within Finos with our Linux foundation colleagues who is so the ratio of unique contributors as your numerator and your number of projects as your denominator, is that a useful measure? And what does that tell you? So I would argue that if your month [00:55:00] over month growth of unique contributors divided by your number of projects is declining, then that implies that your community is getting thin.
[00:55:08]maybe you're not. Right. And so, you know, I, back to your question, I think it's really understanding what you're trying to achieve in your open source community first and foremost, because I, this goes back to my kind of consulting days. I mean, I think a mistake that. Any organization can make is too many, you know, too many metrics.
[00:55:28] So, you know, you'd go and you, yeah, sort of, I imagine somebody goes through a, well, I guess, no, one's no, one's really going to a bookstore right now, but metaphorically, if you go to the local barns, well, you go to the local independent bookstore and you go to the section and you get some books about  and KPI's as well.
[00:55:50] You know, very soon you can create this sort of dashboard and, you know, you could even draw the same conclusion, just looking at this health check of like all of these, you know, [00:56:00] All of these metrics and measures, well, you know, collecting the data to calculate these. I mean, there's a lot of tools out there that help with that.
[00:56:07] But even at that's overhead, that's cost, right? That's time. You're not spending building your community if you're working on calculating stuff. So being really judicious, I think in the use of metrics and being really clear we're on what are my goals? What are the words? One or two metrics or three metrics that are really going to be important.
[00:56:23]to demonstrate progress, you know, quarter over year, and then focusing on those and not getting too caught up in too many other metrics. 
[00:56:32] Venia: [00:56:32] Absolutely. really good advice. And, we actually use something called the Q I a process. The question information action process.
[00:56:43] Don't even think about the information column until you have. What is the question and what exactly is the action that you're going to take if that metric within expectations? Yeah. Expectations. And [00:57:00] once you know that if the action doesn't really seem useful, You don't need a metric. 
[00:57:06] Rob Underwood: [00:57:06] That's 
[00:57:06] Venia: [00:57:06] fine. That's dinner action.
[00:57:08] You're just asking a question that is for information sake, just for the sake of curiosity, 
[00:57:13] Rob Underwood: [00:57:13] what is the question you're asking of the data? What is the question you're asking of the day? That's great. 
[00:57:18]Venia: [00:57:18] one thing that we're going to need to do, is. As we kind of close up, we have one thing that we tend to do on every part, all picks.
[00:57:29] It can be anything. So it could be something that happened in your private or personal life that you're really excited about. Or it could be something that's actually related to work. what is one thing that's like your guiding light? so the big question is what is one thing that is going on in your universe?
[00:57:48] That you think our listeners will learn from 
[00:57:52] Rob Underwood: [00:57:52] vote? 
[00:57:56] Venia: [00:57:56] Oh, wow. Yes, absolutely. That's not [00:58:00] even just a United States thing. It's just everywhere vote. I want that one 
[00:58:08] Rob Underwood: [00:58:08] make a choice. Vote, pick one vote. 
[00:58:12] Venia: [00:58:12] Absolutely. that's honestly, probably the best thing I think I've ever heard. yeah, I would definitely say, for my pay vote.
[00:58:21] No, definitely do that. but one other thing that I've realized, here in the United States, especially in California and. here in Colorado where I am, I've been having a lot of wildfires lately and that combined with a lot of civil unrest and crisis that you're now what, seven months into a, there's a lot of stresses and a lot of things that we can't control necessarily.
[00:58:49] But what we can do is support the people who are on the front lines of each of those things. So I would say donate contributes taking care of 
[00:58:59] Rob Underwood: [00:58:59] that. [00:59:00] Yup. I would say definitely donate, definitely contribute. I think the other thing is that, having sympathy and empathy. So, you know, I could go into my own personal circumstance being a parent of three and doing distance learning and the struggles and challenges, but I would say.
[00:59:17] Assume that everybody you meet is going through a hard time right now that they have real struggle. 
[00:59:24] Venia: [00:59:24] Yeah. 
[00:59:24]Rob Underwood: [00:59:24] real pain, the, give people the benefit of the doubt, give people a wide berth. yeah. If people are, irritable or annoyed by some, just give people the benefit of the doubt. I think empathy, it's a time for empathy.
[00:59:42] I think. that's, that's just super important right now is that we're going through a hard time. and I would say the other thing, which I feel really passionately about is, you know, you know, knock on wood. I was here in New York during the worst of the pandemic in April, [01:00:00] and we seem to be getting this under control.
[01:00:04] But just wear a frigging mask when you leave your house, put your mask on and keep your mask on. And I don't care if you're outside and walking, you know, through the Rockies, like keep your mask on because it's also a sign of solidarity. It says, Hey, we're going to get through this. We're in this together.
[01:00:24] This mask is a sign that we're work together. We're a community. We're gonna get through this. So just keep your mask on all the time. You leave the door, put your mask on, keep it on all the time. Mass mask. Keep your mask on. So vote and wear a mask. 
[01:00:38] Venia: [01:00:38] Yeah, and I didn't mean to cut you off or anything like 
[01:00:41] Rob Underwood: [01:00:41] that, 
[01:00:42] Venia: [01:00:42] but I think those are two very wonderful picks, things that we can kind of learn from and, kind of a little bit of a public service announcement, honestly.
[01:00:51] And one that is very much needed. as a lot of people are kind of getting worn down a little bit, but, this is going [01:01:00] to be the conclusion of the podcast. Thank you, everyone listening, for joining us today, to stay up to date on future episodes, subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast, pass the app, share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[01:01:14] And if you have ideas for future episode topics, or would even like to come on as a guest, please email us@podcastatchaos.community. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And until next time, this is your chaos community.