What Is An Open Source Program Manager?

As tech companies depend on open source projects as part of their strategy, many have created their own OSPO (Open Source Programs Office), and hired open source program managers to staff them. In this article I'll take a look at what these OSS PgMs do, based on my own experience running open source strategy and program development at Google.

While OSPOs often handle important processes such as compliance and licensing, for the sake of this article I'm going to focus on where OSS PgMs resource the business directly: how they are responsible for the healthy growth of open source projects, and providing connectivity back into the host company.

The responsibilities of an OSS PgM can be divided over two axes: company-focused to project-focused, and program management to individual contributor work.

To understand the breadth of this role, let's explore the four key areas an Open Source Program Manager focuses on:

1. The Community Builder (outward-facing programs work)

At the heart of a thriving open source project lies its community, of which open source program managers are architects and nurturers. Responsibilities here cover a wide gamut, from marketing activities through to enabling the developer base through contributor onboarding, governance, and events. The OSS PgM may even take on product manager responsibilities such as release management or feature prioritization. They're often a key point of contact for contributors.

2. The Diplomat (company-facing individual work)

For any business to effectively harness its investments in open source, the Diplomat is an essential role for an open source program manager. They advocate for the project internally, securing resources and support from leadership while ensuring alignment with company goals. This will inevitably include advising leadership on the benefits and challenges of open source, equipping engineering teams to effectively contribute, representing the external stakeholders of a project to the company, and building cross-company relationships that help the overall project ecosystem.

3. The Strategist (company-facing programs work)

An open source project's adoption and energy can be radically affected by how well a sponsor or host company gets behind the project. And somebody needs to make sure all the ducks are in a row: this is the OSS PgM in Strategist mode. This is a cross-functional activity—on the marketing side, it's rallying devrel and marketing to get behind the project—and on the product side, helping leadership ensure the project is adequately resourced and that the open source roadmap is coordinated with any dependent product roadmaps. At their best, the OSS PgM is an indispensable partner to internal leadership.

4. The Advocate (project-facing individual work)

Open source program managers are passionate advocates for their project. They are comfortable working in public, and actively promote a project's adoption and use through evangelism, education, and managing relationships with other projects and software foundation. They may also help in sourcing or administering key project resources, such as GitHub and CI/CD pipelines. In some circumstances, the OSS PgM may be the main face of a project, leading the open source developer advocacy. And they may be the go-to contact for their employer: in big projects this is a role requiring tact, patience, and a thick skin.

Does an OSS PgM do all of these things at once? The unicorn program manager does exist, but it's rare to find the marketing, business, community, diplomacy, and engineering traits all in one person! In reality, this is a spectrum and the program manager will adapt to where the need is, and where their particular skills lie.

For me, it was the privilege of a lifetime to lead a team of skilled OSS PgMs, where I saw their insight and leadership applied to projects such as Go, Istio, and Apache Beam. In large companies, where engineers and leaders come and go, the open source program manager is an invaluable in ensuring the business gets the results it intended from its open source investments.

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This article is part of a series in which I'm sharing hard-won insights from my tech career. Subscribe to Wilder Thoughts to read more, and if you like this post, please share it to your network!