[CNCF TOC] TAG Reboot: Restructuring the Technical Advisory Groups to scale for the next 10 years in Cloud Native

[angellk]

The CNCF has grown exponentially in number of projects, community members and end user adoption. The TAGs have not been able to scale to meet the technical demand required of the TOC.

Over the last two years there have been a number of conversations and proposals broaching this topic collectively with TAG leadership and the CNCF community. At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA in Salt Lake City, the TOC shared an initial TAG Reboot proposal with the TAG leads. TOC Liaisons worked with corresponding TAG Chairs and Leads to collect open feedback and comments in the TOC+TAG meeting issue.

On February 4, the TOC will be presenting the new TAG structure (which the TOC will be voting on) which incorporates all TAG community feedback - this issue will be used to track implementation questions.

Why is the TOC Rebooting the TAGs?

TAGs today are unhealthy due to a number of factors:

• Loss of representative domain experts
• Various TAG leadership burnout
• Lack of TAG leadership onboarding
• Various TAGs performing out of scope work
• Lack of specific asks from the TOC
• TAGs burdened with operational overhead
• Project presentations being the sole focus of community meetings for some TAGs
• Lack of consistent oversight over Working Groups and ongoing TAG work

The TOC initially approved the formation of the TAGs in order to:

• Scale the TOC’s technical leadership
• Provide expert guidance to end users using specific projects
• Identify technology gaps in the ecosystem

Note: The TAG charter and guidance will be updated and clarified during this TAG Reboot.

What is the TAG Reboot going to do?

Restructure the TAGs

• Consolidate the number of TAGs from 8 to 5
• Transition existing working group efforts to the new structure and operating model after alignment evaluation (reference application further below)

Introduce Subprojects and Initiatives

• Alignment with K8s working group concept and homing working groups to exist at the TOC level, not under TAGs
• Previous Working Group may apply to be a new Subproject or Initiative in a TAG, pending TOC approval
• Any new Working Group is a TOC-led function

Move all project presentations and reviews to a dedicated group reporting to the TOC and representative of all TAGs

• Focus on a global cloud native view that provides the greatest collaborative impact

Re-focus TAG work to be in line with TOC requirements:

• Focus on projects and technical objectives
• Focus on TOC requests
• Provide pathways for community and TAG focuses to be appropriately supported via TOC requests

Clean up all TAG websites and repos

• Align TAG repos, websites, collateral to new rebooted structure
• Provide redirects so community members can locate previous artifacts

What components does the new structure have?

Technical Advisory Groups (TAG)

• Primary organizational unit that is aligned with an industry problem domain or a group that serves a common need across TAGs & CNCF Projects.
• Characteristics: long-lived, has leads, defined charter, provides services to the projects, other TAGs, or the TOC, and reports to the TOC.

Working Group

• A cross domain, time bound or goal focused group that has an explicit deliverable.
• Characteristics: short-lived, objective focused, has leads, reports to the TOC, has a defined charter & exit criteria.

Subproject

• An ongoing or “permanent” project as part of a TAG, or under the TOC directly.
• Characteristics: long-lived, has leads, service or thing that requires ongoing stewardship, has charter that defines scope, reports to parent group (TAG or TOC)

Initiative

• A lightweight organizational unit used for TOC-led Subproject or TAG local, short term or finite work.
• Characteristics: short-lived, objective focused, led and reported on by Technical Lead, reports to parent group, has a very narrow defined scope.

Community Group

• A topic or domain focused group used to serve as a rallying point for community members to discuss, share knowledge, and coordinate potential future initiatives.
• Characteristics: no leadership, similar to a BoF or discussion group.

When will the TAG Reboot changes happen?

• Maintainer Summit at KubeCon London will have:
  • a TAG Reboot workshop that will allow community members to generate initiative ideas
  • a Project Reviews workshop that will be recorded
• New leadership will be implemented after KubeCon so any gaps may be recruited at Maintainer Summit and KubeCon proper
• Any TAG maintainer track talks accepted are asked to review the new TAG structure and guidelines and incorporate appropriate content to inform attendees of upcoming changes
• Any sessions that reference TAG working items are asked to review the new TAG structure and guidelines to ensure continuation of work as appropriate in the new structure.