The Trusted Committer role is a very demanding but at the same time very fulfilling role. If this learning path has interested you in the role of a Trusted Committer, you might ask yourself: how do I actually become Trusted Committer, and am I the right person to fill that role?
InnerSource communities follow the same principles that Open Source communities do, one of which is meritocracy. In a meritocracy, power is vested in individuals based on their talent, effort and achievement. In other words, the responsibility and privileges that come with the Trusted Committer role need to be earned. Transparency, another Open Source value, also plays a vital role in that it makes the talent, effort and achievements visible to the whole community.
The process of officially becoming a Trusted Committer differs from community to community, depends on where you are in your InnerSource journey and might evolve over time. In grass-roots type communities, the founders often automatically assume the role of the Trusted Committer as well. As a community grows, the community or the existing Trusted Committers might nominate a contributor to become Trusted Committer, which might or might not be subject to a community vote. Ideally, nominated contributors should take on the Trusted Committer role voluntarily, as that indicates a high level of commitment.
What are the criteria to apply in nominating contributors for a Trusted Committer role? What does it take to successfully fill the role of a Trusted Committer? First off, potential Trusted Committers need to have demonstrated a deep, technical competence during their work in the community. In addition to that, they must have proven their ability to effectively communicate with peers in the community and ideally also with product owners and with management, as that’s a key part of the Trusted Committer role.
In the same vein, they must have shown the willingness and patience to use their skills and spend intentional time to uplevel contributors so that they can make more contributions than they could have on their own. Finally, fulfilling the Trusted Committer role requires a certain emotional maturity in order to be able to deal with stressful social situations, which are bound to come up from time to time. Contributors who satisfy these criteria will be good potential Trusted Committers, in our opinion.
For some contributors, the Trusted Committer role might not appear all that attractive as it means spending less time on coding. Being nominated as a Trusted Committer might even be perceived by some as a demotion or a negative comment on their coding skills. The opposite is true. Being nominated as a Trusted Committer is most often a sign that someone has recognized your potential to grow and that you are indeed already growing, personally. The Trusted Committer role will give you more influence over the evolution of the codebase. That and the wider perspective the Trusted Committer role affords will arguably make you a more complete developer. And as any trainer will be tell you, explaining something to someone else, in the Trusted Committer’s case explaining to contributors how the software works, more often than not leads to new insights on part of the Trusted Committer and will help to identify opportunities to improve the software.
Whether or not you have only one or multiple Trusted Committers depends on the size and the risk associated with the software developed in the InnerSource community. The Trusted Committer role is time consuming and not everyone is willing or empowered to spend 100% of their time as Trusted Committer. Some companies have therefore enacted a Trusted Committer rotation where multiple Trusted Committers share the workload of the Trusted Committer role and the Trusted Committers who are not on duty could exclusively focus on tech oriented work. Another reason to have multiple Trusted Committers is to prepare for the inevitable case that some Trusted Committers can no longer take on their responsibilities, e.g. because they are changing to another position in the company or because they leave it. In that case, it is important that there are other Trusted Committers in place already, who can take over and ensure continuity in the community.
In summary, the Trusted Committer role has to be earned in the community by making valuable contributions - both technical contributions and social contributions for the benefit of the community. In a healthy community, you will have fellow Trusted Committers at your side. As a Trusted Committer, you will have less time to code yourself. However, by acting as a force multiplier you will ultimately be able to boost your value contribution to the community and accelerate your own growth.