Surveying inner source adoption in IKEA

Abstract: Open source has lately been gaining more traction and recognition in the software industry. The practices are being implemented within various organisations through an approach known as inner source, which involves taking the principles and practices that have been proven effective in open source environments and applying them within an internal context. This thesis focuses on an exploration of IKEA's current software development processes, aiming for assessing the potential of inner source adoption by surveying several developer teams. Utilizing the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) methodology, critical performance metrics were identified and used to gather the team’s development metadata from their GitHub code repositories. This data was then analysed and assessed in combination with the current best-practices of inner source development. Recommendations based on the findings include ensuring comprehensive documentation, fine-tuning testing practices and adherence to test results, ensuring pull request management processes and increasing project visibility within the organisation. Addressing these aspects could help facilitate the adoption of inner source practices in IKEA, bringing benefits not only to the developer teams but to the entire organisation.