Open Source Adoption Review Worksheet

Use this worksheet when a team is considering an open source project, tool, framework, model, or platform and needs a clear adoption conversation before the decision gets too big.

You do not need perfect answers. The goal is to understand enough about fit, risk, ownership, and next steps to decide whether adoption should move forward, pause, or start as a small pilot.

1. Name the adoption decision

  • What project, tool, framework, model, or platform is being considered?
  • What problem would it help solve?
  • Who wants to adopt it, and who would depend on it afterward?
  • Is this replacing something, adding a new capability, or supporting an experiment?
  • What decision needs to be made now?

2. Clarify the public responsibility

  • Does this affect public-facing services, internal operations, data workflows, policy implementation, or constituent experience?
  • Are there accessibility, privacy, security, procurement, records, or compliance requirements?
  • Will the tool handle sensitive data, regulated data, telemetry, user content, or public records?
  • Who would be affected if the tool failed, changed direction, or became unavailable?

3. Look at project fit

  • Does the project solve the real problem, or only part of it?
  • How mature is the project for your use case?
  • Is the documentation good enough for the teams that would use it?
  • Are the license, governance, release cadence, and support model understandable?
  • Does the project depend on hosted services, plugins, models, vendors, or infrastructure that need separate review?

4. Understand ownership and maintenance

  • Who will own the tool after adoption?
  • Who will apply updates, respond to vulnerabilities, and handle configuration changes?
  • What skills are needed to maintain it?
  • Is there budget, staff time, vendor support, or community support available?
  • What happens if the original champion leaves?

5. Review risk and obligations

  • What legal, license, security, privacy, procurement, accessibility, or policy questions need review?
  • What risks are acceptable, and which ones need mitigation before adoption?
  • Is an SBOM, dependency review, vendor review, or project health review needed?
  • Are there open issues, governance concerns, maintainer capacity concerns, or sustainability questions?
  • What should be documented for future reviewers?

6. Decide how to start small

  • Can this begin as a limited pilot, prototype, sandbox, or internal evaluation?
  • What would a useful pilot prove?
  • What should not be included in the first step?
  • Who needs to be involved before the pilot starts?
  • What would cause the team to stop, revise, or expand the adoption path?

7. Leave with a decision path

  • Adopt now, pilot first, gather more information, contribute upstream, sponsor/support, or avoid?
  • Who owns the next step?
  • What is the smallest useful artifact from this review?
  • When should the decision be revisited?

When to ask for help

Bring in support when the adoption decision crosses technical, procurement, policy, legal, security, accessibility, or stewardship concerns and the next step is not yet clear.

Next step: Talk through a first step.