Introduction
Blip is part of the Flutter Tech group, a global organisation that provides excitement and entertainment in a safe and responsible way to 13 million customers, spread over 100 countries. Our people across 15 locations contribute to Flutter being a global leader in sports betting and gaming industry. We are the number one digital sportsbook in the world, with annual revenues of over £4bn and a portfolio of 14 market-leading brands like FanDuel, PokerStars, Betfair, PaddyPower, Sky Betting and Gaming, among others. Each brand has best in class products, powered by our in-house technology.
Why Inner Source?
Producing high-quality products requires a lot of effort and complexity. For this reason, creating separate products for each brand would mean getting little value from operating as a Flutter group. Instead, we use Inner Source to share the effort to build some of our best and most complex products across several brands. Considering this level of impact and dimension, Flutter recognised an opportunity to leverage each brand's value. This means:
- Reusability of products and features to save time, resources, and development costs to achieve faster time to market;
- Boost collaboration worldwide by leveraging expertise, innovation and improving code quality;
- Enhancing scalability and resilience so that we can use the investment to roll out features to other divisions;
- Cultivate intrinsic motivations by building a community as large as the organisation’s entire development staff;
- Adding value at scale and speed to the organisation’s development approach.
This is where Inner Source comes through as the desired development method: Inner Source integrates open-source processes and collaboration techniques into the organisation framework, comprising transparency, collaboration, and alignment as the main core values.
Rather than a methodology, it is a philosophy and culture designed for code, documentation, and other artefacts to be publicly accessible internally, so that anyone in the organisation can contribute to a common platform with shared codebases. It is called inner source because the software is sourced internally – just like open source, but inside the organisation.
How Do We Make It Possible?
Any internal team can use the Flutter group's Inner Source products, and any of our 4000 engineers from any division or location are welcome to contribute. We establish the ideal conditions for an effective cross-brand cooperation by:
- Determining the appropriate levels of accountability among those contributing and maintaining the product at its best;
- Increasing visibility of all the work planned and already completed for that product;
- Encouraging the necessary community alignment through the creation of communication channels, events, and artefacts;
- Breaking down the product to a more modular approach (e.g., capabilities that can deliver business value on their own).
Conclusion
More than a well-defined approach and tailored governance model, implementing Inner Source throughout such a large-scale group is a long journey and requires a cultural shift. Still, we believe that the benefits and impactful outcomes of its implementation make up for it.
Learn more about Inner Source.
Soraia Gonçalves
