Governance Remediation Process

[mattfarina]

There are situations where TOC may be asked to evaluate CNCF projects in ways that are not addressed by an existing project process or governance (e.g., when projects go through maturity reviews and votes). This issue provides a proposed scope for a Governance Remediation Process along with what would be in and out of scope for such a process.

This is a request for feedback from the community, with guidance from TAG Contributor Strategy.

In Scope:

• A review and possible remediation for a project not following its governance which has resulted in conflicts. The goal here would be to correct so the project is following its governance.
• A situation where issues have arisen, a project does not have governance to handle the situation, and the project has been unable to create a working governance to handle the situation. The goal here would be to get a working governance.

Projects are self-governing. Documented governance is not a requirement until graduation. This is when the TOC can verify the governance is able to handle making decisions.

Out of Scope:

• Conduct issues with people in the community. This is the scope of the code of conduct processes.
• Disagreements around direction or technical implementation. These are the scope of the project. Projects should have governance to handle such decisions. If not, they should pause on the issue to update and document the governance to handle the situation, and then return to the decision.
• Elements covered as part the existing lifecycle process for projects.

We are looking at two stages to this process.

1. TAG Contributor Strategy works with the project to (a) help them follow their governance if it's not being followed or (b) update the governance to enable the project to have the governance needed to solve the issue.
2. If TAG Contributor strategy is unable to work with the project to resolve the issue the TOC will have an escalation process.

The issue for TAG Contributor to handle their process for this can be found at cncf/tag-contributor-strategy#318.

If you have any feedback on this proposal we would appreciate reading it.

[caniszczyk]

I like this approach, my biggest bit of feedback would be to have the CNCF TOC Chair + CNCF Leadership member involved too as these issues can tend to blow up and it's better to involve folks earlier imho. Note, this rarely happens so I don't see us needing to interject often.

…

On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 2:01 PM Matt Farina ***@***.***> wrote: There are situations where TOC may be asked to evaluate CNCF projects in ways that are not addressed by an existing project process or governance (e.g., when projects go through maturity reviews and votes). This issue provides a proposed scope for a Governance Remediation Process along with what would be in and out of scope for such a process. This is a request for feedback from the community, with guidance from TAG Contributor Strategy. *In Scope:* - A review and possible remediation for a project not following its governance which has resulted in conflicts. The goal here would be to correct so the project is following its governance. - A situation where issues have arisen, a project does not have governance to handle the situation, and the project has been unable to create a working governance to handle the situation. The goal here would be to get a working governance. Projects are self-governing. Documented governance is not a requirement until graduation. This is when the TOC can verify the governance is able to handle making decisions. *Out of Scope:* - Conduct issues with people in the community. This is the scope of the code of conduct processes. - Disagreements around direction or technical implementation. These are the scope of the project. Projects should have governance to handle such decisions. If not, they should pause on the issue to update and document the governance to handle the situation, and then return to the decision. - Elements covered as part the existing lifecycle process for projects. We are looking at two stages to this process. 1. TAG Contributor Strategy works with the project to (a) help them follow their governance if it's not being followed or (b) update the governance to enable the project to have the governance needed to solve the issue. 2. If TAG Contributor strategy is unable to work with the project to resolve the issue the TOC will have an escalation process. The issue for TAG Contributor to handle their process for this can be found at ABC123. If you have any feedback on this proposal we would appreciate reading it. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#999>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAPSIMO45PGQH47HASDHI3WVGDSDANCNFSM6AAAAAAUM63PRY> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

-- Cheers, Chris Aniszczyk https://aniszczyk.org

[anvega]

Before getting into the specifics of remediation it might be worthwhile to establish a common definition of what is meant by term governance. It's a fairly overloaded term used loose and liberally in different contexts.

• The TOC is described as a technical governing body
• The projects are self governing
• Project proposals stipulated for Sandbox, Graduation, and Incubation state: This governance policy sets forth the proposal process for projects to be accepted into the CNCF
• Same document talks about Remove possible legal and governance obstacles to adoption and contribution by ensuring all projects adhere to CNCF legal, code of conduct and IP Policy requirements for Sandbox projects
• Best Practices Badge App states: The project MUST clearly define and document its project governance model (the way it makes decisions, including key roles).

Concrete examples of what constitutes governance will be useful. A helpful concept might be that of governance as the process defined by project leadership typically within a set of principles and rules. The same can be understood as the process by which authority is conferred on leaders of the project by which those leaders makes new processes, and by which that process is enforced and modified.

Examples of good working governance might provide a good model as well as pointing out the effects of the breakdown of governance to be able to identity those.

I understand the technical qualifier in the TOC name is to distinguish it from the administrative bodies in the organization, however if anything technical be engineering rigor, technical implementation, or direction, is outside of scope, the name quickly becomes a misnomer. Would it be useful to rename the TOC to something more descriptive as Governance Review Committee as the escalation team for Contributor Strategy?

[jberkus]

We're going to hammer this out in the issue in the TAG-CS repo, and then present a composed proposal here.

[mauilion]

linked to the cs issue: cncf/tag-contributor-strategy#318

[amye]

@mattfarina - we did some backlog grooming today and we'd like to get this one completed!

[TheFoxAtWork]

@jberkus any status on this?