Innersource for scaling at Publicis Sapient
Let’s take a closer look at the lessons we learned from implementing InnerSource for scaling at Publicis Sapient.
First and foremost, you must get everyone on board to reap the benefits. It’s natural for people to want to continue working in the way they’ve always done, so it’s important to put an incentive structure in place to generate excitement.
The idea of reusing past work takes a bit of a culture and mindset shift. At Publicis Sapient, we provided training and a comprehensive communications strategy to counteract this. We also promoted InnerSource at various company events, which increased engagement with our Global Engineering leadership sponsorship. In fact, the number of people contributing to InnerSource doubled over the course of half a year.
Make sure a governance structure is in place with committed executive sponsors. They, in turn, can elect InnerSource champions to generate momentum within their teams. This is very similar to what we did at Publicis Sapient, with senior executives on hand to drive things forward, coach and review—and release more funding whenever value is demonstrated.
When the vision is big, sometimes it’s best to start small
So to kick off, select a few products that have already proven successful, and use them to create a roadmap for future use. Engineers can then familiarize themselves with how these products work and try their hand at making incremental improvements. At Publicis Sapient, we encouraged collaboration among engineers with GitLab and created a platform to showcase their best products.