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Getting Started

Insights has a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate. The tool is designed to be intuitive, which means that you can quickly learn how to use it and start gaining insights from your data.

Accessing Insights

To use the new Insights user interface, follow these steps:

Visit the web URL. You will be redirected to the Insights home page.
The Insights Dashboard is the default dashboard.
You can see all the foundation and project cards on the main page. Alternatively, search the project or a foundation using the Search Bar.

Landing Page

The Landing Page provides all the important analytics about your foundations and projects. It is designed to give you a quick overview of your data and help you navigate the tool easily.

This page focuses on the Foundation Cards and the individual Project Cards, which serve as the core navigational elements, presenting the key data metrics.

Select the Projects and the Foundations: The search box at the top of the main menu helps you find a particular project or repository.

Search for a particular project:

To find a particular project, enter its name or relevant keywords into the search box.
As you type, the search functionality provides real-time suggestions based on your input, making it easier to identify the desired project quickly.
Once you find the project you're looking for, click on it to access its dedicated overview page.

Foundation Cards: Foundation Cards are like summary cards that provide key insights into different open source foundations. When you click on one of these cards, you will be redirected to a Foundation Overview dashboard specifically dedicated to that foundation.

When you click on a foundation card that has only one project, you will be redirected to the Project Overview page.

Project Cards: On the main page, you will see the project cards. Each card represents an individual open source project. When you click on a project card, it takes you to a dedicated Overview Page for that project. These cards show you real-time data about each project, such as important numbers and updates.

Foundation Cards

On the landing page, the foundation cards are designed to show you real-time data and key metrics related to the foundation and its projects.

A foundation card displays the following key metrics:

Key Metrics

Total contributors
Total organizations
Total Projects
Lines of code
PRs
Commits
Software Value (COCOMO)

Interact with Foundation Cards

When you click on a foundation card, it opens up a Foundation Dashboard dedicated to that foundation. Here, you will find more detailed information about the foundation's contributions to the open source community.

A foundation card has the following details:

Click on theicon to open the GitHub page of the foundation.
Click on the icon to open the foundation's webpage.
Hover over the to see the inception year of the foundation.

It shows the key metrics of the foundation.
Software Value: Constructive Cost Modal (COCOMO) is a procedural cost estimate model for software projects.

On the top of each card, you can see the icons of the integrated data source. For example, on the above card, GitHub is an integrated data source.

Accessing the Foundation Overview Page

Click on a Foundation Card from the Landing Page or search (2) for the foundation using the search box at the top.

Scroll down to see all the listed foundations and projects.

Foundation Overview

The Foundation Overview page in Insights provides a comprehensive snapshot of your open source foundation, enabling you to gain valuable insights into your projects' performance and growth.

Disclaimer: Not all the foundations need to follow the same maturity level categorization. So, the Foundation Overview page may look different for your foundation.

Analyze the Foundation Dashboard

Header Section

At the top of the page, you will find the header section, which includes the following elements:

1. Foundation Name:

The name of your foundation is displayed prominently at the top of the page, providing clear identification.

2. Project Seach Box

3. Key Metrics

At the top, you will see the following four high-level metrics:

Projects: The metric shows the total projects within the foundation.
Contributors: It shows the total number of contributors among all the projects within the foundation.
Lines of Code: Displays the total lines of code written for all the projects within the foundation.
Organizations: The metric shows the total number of organizations that have contributed to the projects within the foundation.

Using this search box, you can select another foundation or a project.

Navigating Back

Project Ecosystem

On the Foundation Overview page, you will find the Project Ecosystem Metrics. This section includes two informative charts.

Project Ecosystem Metrics

Project Ecosystem Metrics in an open source foundation represent quantitative measurements that provide insights into the health, growth, and diversity of projects within the foundation's ecosystem. These metrics involve data analysis across various dimensions, such as:

Project Maturity Levels: Categorization of projects based on their developmental stage, community engagement, and stability.
Growth Trends: Analysis of the number of projects being accepted over time, indicating the expansion and attraction of the foundation's ecosystem.
Diversity Indices: Evaluation of the diversity within projects and their communities, assessing the inclusiveness and global reach of the foundation's ecosystem.
Sustainability Indicators: Insights into the long-term viability of projects, including funding, resource allocation, and project continuity plans.

Disclaimer: It is not necessary that all the foundations follow the same maturity level categorization. So, the Foundation Overview page may look different for your foundation.

You will see the total number of projects of the foundation as per their maturity level.

Projects Accepted Over Time

The chart enables visualization of growth and acceptance patterns for new projects.
Hovering over the chart reveals the count of projects accepted during specific time frames.
It presents a historical trend of project acceptances into your foundation over time.

Projects Accepted Trends

Provides analysis of acceptance rates to identify periods of high or low project acceptance.
The subsequent chart illustrates the trend of projects approved by your foundation.

Distribution of Projects

Distribution of project based on maturity level and rating

The metric categorizes your projects based on their maturity level and rating.

This helps you see how projects are distributed across different maturity levels and ratings, allowing you to make informed decisions about resource allocation and project management.

At each maturity level, projects are further segregated as per rating.

Rating

Ratings are based on the cumulative best practice scores of the projects.

A [75-100]
B [50-74]
C [25-49]
D [0-24]

For example: Click on the pie chart under the Incubating Projects card to see the projects' categorization as per the ratings.

Project Velocity

Project velocity in open source projects refers to the rate at which development tasks are completed and features are delivered. It measures the amount of work completed in a specific amount of time.

A higher velocity suggests increased efficiency and progress, while a lower velocity may indicate challenges or bottlenecks.

Monitoring project velocity helps teams assess their performance and plan future tasks accordingly, ensuring steady project advancement.

The Project Velocity chart displays data from the last calendar year.

How the project velocity is calculated?

The velocity is calculated based on the activity in the project. The logarithmic values of these metrics are used to normalize the data and make it easier to compare across different projects.

The most common base for logarithms is 10. In this case, the logarithm gives you the power to which 10 must be raised to obtain the given number.

Example: log₁₀(100) = 2, because 10² = 100. In this case, the logarithm base 10 of 100 is 2, because 10 raised to the power of 2 equals 100.

Another example: log₁₀(1000) = 3, because 10³ = 1000.

To compute velocity, the following metrics are used:

Commits: Total number of commits
Pull Requests: The number of pull requests opened
Issues: The number of issues opened
Contributors: The total number of contributors who made the above kinds of contributions (i.e. Commits, Pull Requests, Issues)

On the Y-axis, there's a logarithmic scale representing PRs and Issues.
On the X-axis, there's a logarithmic scale representing commits.
The chart visualizes the correlation between code changes and collaboration.

Leaderboard: Project Velocity

To further understand the project's velocity, create a leaderboard. This ranks projects based on their commit numbers and provides a comparative view of their commits, PRs, and issues. This leaderboard can help in identifying the most active projects at a glance.

Review the top projects based on their commit numbers.
Compare their commit count, PRs, and issues in a single view.

Foundation's Projects

On the Projects page, you can see the project cards of the selected foundation with their project maturity tags.

You can filter the project cards using the Maturity Level, Rating, and Accepted filter options.

Project Cards

On the landing page, the project cards are designed to show you real-time data and key metrics related to each project.

A project card displays the following key metrics:

Key metrics on a project card may vary as per the data sources. Projects with Git data sources will have fewer metrics.

Key Metrics:

Contributors
Pull requests
commits issues
Stars
Forks
Active contributors
Participating organizations
Issue response time
Average wait time for 1st review
Best practice score

Interact with Project Cards

When you click on a project card, it opens up an overview page dedicated to that specific project. This overview page provides more detailed information about the project, such as in-depth analytics, charts, and other relevant data.

The Project Card has the following details:

GitHub Icon: Click the (1) GitHub icon to go to the GitHub repositories of the project.

Aggregated data: it shows the real-time data of contributions, commits, PRs, issues, stars, and forks for the project.
Info Icon: shows the date and the time when the Best Practice Score was last updated.
Software Value: Constructive Cost Modal (COCOMO) is a procedural cost estimate model for software projects.

COCOMO: Cost Estimation Simplified

Constructive Cost Model

The COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) is a widely used model that estimates the effort, time, and cost associated with software development projects.

The model takes into account factors such as project size, complexity, team experience, and development environment.

The following tool is used to generate COCOMO Score: https://github.com/boyter/scc

The COCOMO model consists of three different levels or modes:

Basic COCOMO: This mode is used for early-stage project estimates and focuses on estimating effort based on lines of code (LOC). It uses a simple formula to calculate the effort required for a project, taking into account the project size in KLOC (thousands of lines of code).

Insights V3 uses the basic model to calculate the software estimates for the selected open source projects.

Basic COCOMO calculation Formula:

The model uses a formula to calculate the development effort based on the estimated size.

Effort (in person-months) = a * (Size in KLOC)^b

Where 'a' and 'b' are coefficients specific to the type of software project being estimated. These coefficients can be derived from the table.

Example (Sample Calculation):

Let's assume you have a small open source project with a codebase size of 10,000 lines of code (LOC). The coefficients for the type of software project being estimated are a = 2.4 and b = 1.05.

Effort (in person-months)= 2.4 * (KLOC)^1.05
Effort = 2.4 * (10)^1.05
Effort = 2.4 * 10.47
Effort ≈ 25.13 person-months

Cost Estimation:

To estimate the cost of the project, you need to consider the cost per person-month, which represents the average cost of one person working on the project for a month.

Example: Let's assume the cost per person-month is $6,000.

Cost = Effort * Cost per person-month (Store in DB)
Cost = 190.56 person-months * $6,000/person-month
Cost ≈ $1,143,360 (rounded to the nearest dollar)

Constants based on Software Project Types (stored in the DB):

For more information, see: