Selecting Infrastructure and Tools for Longevity

Last updated on 2025-04-25 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 35 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • How do technical choices affect the sustainability of an open project?
  • What are the trade-offs between simplicity, scalability, and maintainability?
  • How can we align infrastructure decisions with community needs?

Objectives

  • Identify infrastructure components critical to open project sustainability.
  • Evaluate tools and platforms based on longevity, support, and community alignment.
  • Use a scenario-based activity to choose infrastructure for a sample project.

What Is Infrastructure in Open Projects?

Infrastructure includes all the technical tools and services that support your project: - Code repositories (e.g., GitHub, GitLab) - Communication platforms (e.g., Slack, Discourse) - Data storage and hosting - Documentation systems - Project management tools

Factors to Consider

  • Simplicity: Can your team and contributors easily use and maintain it?
  • Scalability: Will it still work as your project grows?
  • Interoperability: Does it integrate well with tools your community already uses?
  • Support and Longevity: Is the tool actively maintained and widely adopted?
  • Cost: Are there hidden costs in the long term?

Tool Selection Framework

Use the ITAV framework’s technology facet to guide evaluation: - Prioritize based on current phase (Getting Started, Growing, Stable) - Score options on community adoption, ease of onboarding, sustainability, and flexibility

Challenge

Exercise: Infrastructure Scenario Planning
Time: 15 minutes

You are launching an open educational resource platform. In groups: - Identify 3 infrastructure needs (e.g., code hosting, user contributions, discussion forum) - Choose from a set of provided tools (or your own suggestions) - Justify your choices based on criteria above

Share back with the group.

Discussion

What infrastructure decisions have had a lasting impact (positive or negative) on a project you’ve worked on? What would you do differently now?

Key Points

  • Infrastructure decisions are strategic—not just technical.
  • Tools must match your project’s phase, team capacity, and community expectations.
  • Re-evaluating infrastructure over time is essential to long-term sustainability.

Next Steps

Next, we’ll explore how to fund and resource your project as it grows.