# Portfolio activity

> How inspect.software measures an organization's portfolio activity — recently active repos, yearly activity, portfolio size, and original work. 45% of the org index.


**Portfolio activity** measures whether an organization's repository
portfolio is actually maintained. Organizations accumulate repositories the
way attics accumulate boxes; what distinguishes a working steward from a
graveyard is the share of the portfolio that still moves.

- **Assessment:** [organization](/wiki/organization-assessment), Activity & Reach category (60% within category)
- **Weight in organization overall:** 45%
- **Metric key:** `portfolio_activity`

## How the value is computed

Computed over a sample of up to 100 public repositories, most recently
pushed first:

| Component | Weight | Criteria |
| --------- | ------ | -------- |
| Recently active repositories | 50 | share of sampled repositories pushed within the last 90 days |
| Yearly active repositories | 25 | share pushed within the last year |
| Portfolio size | 15 | log-scaled; ~100 repositories saturates |
| Original work | 10 | share of sampled repositories that are not forks |

## Why shares, not counts

Ratios make organizations of different sizes comparable: an organization
with 8 of 10 repositories active outreads one with 30 of 300. Size still
earns its own (smaller, log-scaled) component, because a substantial
portfolio is real evidence of capacity — it just cannot compensate for a
portfolio that is mostly dormant. The original-work component keeps a wall
of forks from impersonating a development organization.

## Reading the result

- **Archiving is good hygiene, and the metric rewards it.** GitHub excludes
  archived repositories from the default listing, so an organization that
  archives finished work concentrates its sample on what it actively
  maintains. Honest labeling improves the measurement — by making the
  measurement more accurate.
- The 90-day component dominates: this metric describes the present, with
  the yearly component as its trailing context.

## Improving the value

- Archive repositories that are done or abandoned — the single most
  effective action, and it also serves the organization's users.
- Keep maintained repositories visibly maintained: dependency updates and
  fixes count as pushes.

Related: [community reach](/wiki/community-reach) ·
[organization assessment](/wiki/organization-assessment)