New content type - Scenario

[spier]

In two recent conversations in PRs, we were unsure which content should go into which of our existing patterns. We ended up creating comparisons between the related patterns, partly supported by AI. These proved to be super helpful to figure out what the core focus of each of the existing patterns is, and how new patterns can add new insights to "fill the gaps" between the existing patterns.

Besides being useful for pattern maintainers in the context of a PR, I wonder if such overviews/comparisons could also be useful for regular readers of our patterns, to figure out how the patterns are related to each other.

Such a write-up does not feel like a pattern but rather like a new content type of our InnerSource patterns book. If I had to give such write-ups a name I might call it "scenario", "use case", or even just "article".

Example Scenarios

We could publish a scenario called "Enable project reuse". In that scenario we would incorporate this comparison table, and point to patterns immediately related to the scenario.

Recent conversations with pattern comparisons

• comparison of patterns related to the Governance Levels pattern - see comment / Promoting Governance Levels pattern to Structured #765
• comparison of patterns related to the Discover your InnerSource - see comment / feat: promote discover-your-innersource #780

Related

Two other things that this idea reminds me of:

• @rrrutledge had pitched the idea of an InnerSource handbook some time ago. The handbook also wanted to use a format that was less strict than our pattern format, while still reusing or referencing a lot of the content that our patterns provide.
• Our mindmap is already grouping the patterns into smaller groups. For each of these groups one might publish a scenario article. e.g. the "Discovery Challenges" group already contains some of the patterns that might be used in the "Enable project reuse" example above.

Out of scope (for now)

The new content type that we are exploring here could be integrated into one or multiple of our existing ISC assets. e.g. this could fit into the InnerSource Patterns book but also in the Learning Path, or even the Managing InnerSource Projects book.

I think that it would be best to first discuss which content would be helpful for the readers, and how hard it would be to generate such content (we have very few contributors, so I don't want to create an idea that cannot be implemented anyways because it requires too much effort).

Once that is clear, we could discuss again where that content should be published. It could even be integrated into multiple ISC assets.

[rrrutledge]

Look at this Scenarios page where MaryLynn strings together multiple patterns into longer narratives (depending on your goals and context).

[jeffabailey]

Look at this Scenarios page where MaryLynn strings together multiple patterns into longer narratives (depending on your goals and context).

I had the same inclination to tighten up the patterns so we can make them "composable" like MaryLynn does in the Fearless Change Patterns books.

I almost posted a Mermaid diagram to show the relationships, but didn't want to get far our of the scope or #780, so thanks for creating this issue!

[spier]

I had the same inclination to tighten up the patterns so we can make them "composable" like MaryLynn does in the Fearless Change Patterns books.

"Composable" sound like an interesting way to reason about this.

Sometimes the scenarios might compare things in the sense of "if condition A, use Pattern X, rather than pattern Y". So basically like the comparison table, where it shows that all patterns are related but not quite the same as each of them have their specific strengths for a given problem/concept.

[rrrutledge]

I’m really excited for where this is going.