IN THEIR WORDS Financial services leaders on leadership challenges In our interviews, we heard numerous examples of the challenges that “ One of the challenges in defining an open source policy and open source leaders face within financial services organizations. Below implementing corresponding practices stems from differing are a few examples that illustrate common challenges: views on the level of risk that is acceptable. Getting to zero Cultural differences and silos are hard to navigate vulnerabilities is extremely difficult, so it’s important to factor One individual close to open source in their organization explained that in the potential impact of vulnerabilities when determining one of their biggest challenges is cultural: dealing with inertia, silos, and risk. It’s equally important to have senior management agree inter-team collaboration. He noted that it can be very difficult to stan- 28 dardize and formalize policies across different groups and departments to a policy that can be achieved at this level.” within the organization. Open source stakeholders may have different Bottom-up and top-down leadership both add value priorities, which compete for resources Bottom-up and top-down support are important. According to one interviewee: “ Appetite may vary based on business function; it can depend a lot on the actual managing director. For “ Our CTO and VP are keen on promoting emerging tech example, in commercial investment banking, it is seen utilizing a top-down approach but also with developer as massively important, where open source projects like ambassadors. This creates better top-down alignment. Rosetta can revolutionize regulation by code. But there This helps me and the OSPO make sure that the things we is not as much interest to invest in retail banking-focused do are embedded into our core business. It’s clear that the 29 27 OSPO’s job is to be aligned with the business.” projects.” In one bank we spoke with, the stakeholders for initiatives related to open Another interviewee described the bottom-up approach. They said: source consumption go all the way to the management board with signif- icant top-down support coming from the CTO. However, in that same “ When it comes to contribution, it is definitely a organization, the stakeholders focused on contribution work in another bottom-up push. We have engineers who really believe in department and don’t benefit from the same level of senior support. 3031 contributing to open source and have pushed it.” THE 2022 STATE OF OPEN SOURCE IN FINANCIAL SERVICES 3939