Leadership Terms and Contributor Ladder for TAGs

[nikhita]

At the TOC + TAG chairs meeting at KubeCon EU 2024, we discussed that we should define terms for TAG chairs and TLs and define a contributor ladder for TAGs so that we can continue building the bench and have consistency across TAGs. CNCF staff will facilitate the rotations after terms. Leads may re-run, but the intent is to provide opportunities for rotation.

I had signed up to lead this effort. With that, I’m listing down some areas that need to be covered to start with. If you think we should be including areas here, please comment on this GitHub thread.

Please comment if you would like to pick up any task below. I'd like to have at least 2 folks involved in each task. Our goal is to create a proposal to define these to be discussed in the public TOC meeting on April 16th.

I'm starting a thread on the #toc slack channel to coordinate and add content for these in a google doc.

Leadership Terms

• Defining leadership terms for TAG leads (@nikhita, @linsun )
  - Nomination process, term length, consecutive and lifetime term limits (if any)

Contributor Ladder

More areas will likely need to be defined here but I'm adding some below to bootstrap.

• Defining roles within a TAG (@leonardpahlke, 1 more needed here)
  - Needs definition of what roles exist. As an example - Members, Chairs, TLs, Working Group Leads. Involves building on existing content too.
  - What does a person in each role do?
• How to become a Chair? (2 more needed here)
• How to become a Technical Lead? (@rajaskakodkar, 1 more needed here)
• How to become a Working Group Lead? (2 more needed here)

cc @chira001 @linsun @aliok - who have previous expressed interest in this effort
cc @TheFoxAtWork

[leonardpahlke]

Happy to collaborate here on any of the tasks outlined.

[leonardpahlke]

created this diagram some time ago. some visuals could be useful to explain the structures.

[rajaskakodkar]

Thank you for starting this, @nikhita! I would like to collaborate with and pick up How to become a Technical Lead? in the contributor ladder.

[riaankleinhans]

Thank you @nikhita for creating this issue.

For context the current operational model for TAGs are here or people to review as they work on this.

[geekygirldawn]

Also just a reminder that we can probably start with the Contributor Ladder template that we use for projects: https://github.com/cncf/project-template/blob/main/CONTRIBUTOR_LADDER.md

[linsun]

Thanks @nikhita - the list looks GREAT! I can help with Defining leadership terms for TAG leads.

[aliok]

I can join @leonardpahlke with "Defining roles within a TAG" item.
...but I will be on PTO next week. So, I can just review stuff.

[mrbobbytables]

Following up on the conversation at this week’s TOC call regarding TAG ladders.

One issue I believe is currently a problem with TAG sustainability is that there is very little “incentive” to be active in the TAGs and eventually step into a leadership role. Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly people who want to do it and do it well today, but they frequently aren’t encouraged to participate or given time by their employer to really do the job well.

The employer doesn’t see much “value” in the role (also discussed in #1285).

I think some of that will improve once the TAG responsibilities are re-solidified and they are officially delegated some responsibility around projects moving levels, but another way to incentivize it would be to create a path/ladder to the TOC where there most certainly IS a benefit.

So my thought for this is:

• The GB allocates one of their 6 elected positions as a “TAG” seat.
• The TAG seat may be held by any current or emeritus TAG leads.
• The TOC will nominate candidates from the pool of TAG leads.
• The GB will vote on the nominated candidates to elect the member for the “TAG” seat.

My thoughts on this:

• Current and former TAG leads should already be familiar with the type of work the TOC does and the time commitment it requires.
• TOC nominating candidates from this pool should ensure that the candidates are active and would complement the current TOC body.
• GB voting on the nominated candidates ensures they still retain their vote and ability to appoint the candidates; the pool itself is just limited.

The TOC nominating TAG leads for the GB to vote on was the best thing I could think of to “balance” things out without fully reallocating a seat.

Thank you for coming to my TED (TAG?) talk. :D

[TheFoxAtWork]

Thanks @mrbobbytables ! This is a topic the TOC has talked about in a few different areas:

• DTRs DTR Working Group Proposal #1277 (title and content still needs to be updated) would establish a consistent structure for TAGs to engage projects that directly contributes to the Moving levels process.
• As part of our updates to the GB, the TOC is planning to highlight our TAG chairs to increase awareness and exposure of their technical leadership work for potential nomination to the TOC later. This doesn't change the current charter or processes of the GB or TOC but is a reasonable first step down that path.

We've also briefly chatted on whether the current number of TOC members is sufficient for the volume of projects the foundation has. While i've floated this with the GB in the past, we learned we needed to codify our processes in a manner that is scalable and repeatable across a diverse group of individuals before we can determine a need to expand the distribution of work. I am hopeful the new moving levels processes assists here, but also gives us sufficient data points to make a formal recommendation to the GB later.

[mrbobbytables]

• DTRs DTR Working Group Lead #1277 (title and content still needs to be updated) would establish a consistent structure for TAGs to engage projects that directly contributes to the Moving levels process.

+1 I definitely think that is a good move. Having an official responsibility makes the work feel more meaningful and an incentive for employers to give people time to do the job well.

As part of our updates to the GB, the TOC is planning to highlight our TAG chairs to increase awareness and exposure of their technical leadership work for potential nomination to the TOC later. This doesn't change the current charter or processes of the GB or TOC but is a reasonable first step down that path.

I am absolutely all for surfacing more info in digestible ways. Going beyond the TAG/TOC ladder, nice consumable reports (that look nice :p) can show the kind of work externally that the person can also use to justify their continued involvement in the group. This has worked well for The K8s annual reports, but we have a long way to go with those as well.

We've also briefly chatted on whether the current number of TOC members is sufficient for the volume of projects the foundation has. While i've floated this with the GB in the past, we learned we needed to codify our processes in a manner that is scalable and repeatable across a diverse group of individuals before we can determine a need to expand the distribution of work. I am hopeful the new moving levels processes assists here, but also gives us sufficient data points to make a formal recommendation to the GB later.

I agree re:codifying processes.

To be honest - the # of TOC members may not need to be increased if the workload becomes manageable once the TAGs are delegated more of the work regarding project evaluation.

On the topic of a charter change, I know it takes a lot to get that done..my hope is that continuing to give the GB the vote for the candidate would prevent excessive debate on the idea, but can be hard to gauge that one sometimes.

[leonardpahlke]

@aliok created this file to collaborate on the TAG roles part of this issue 🙌 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ubNI8Ry9laN9KXc0vVAxjiIz0xkgxCx5cfwhhFO8ALE/edit?usp=sharing - this is copied from the TAG ENV roles.md which we copied two and a half years ago from TAG Security. We made some changes initially. Later we added information about WG Chairs and TL. Half a year ago we added info about Project leads (which are called Task Force Leads in other TAGs I believe).

[TheFoxAtWork]

Related #1195

As this group is working through the contributor ladder and leadership terms, it would be beneficial to ensure the election process and nomination material for roles is updated. @leonardpahlke initiated this based on the work TAG Environmental Sustainability had on this, so lets reuse what work is already near complete.

[leonardpahlke]

@nikhita @TheFoxAtWork and all started drafting up the roles to have a basis of discussion -- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L3d3Fz6vyk8HiUMAQTSr3QKK7Emh9ECuSqxLQNKxCzc/edit#heading=h.gynsj1fgx2mf (WIP)

[TheFoxAtWork]

wanted to follow up here for a status on this effort and how its progressing. Any updates?

[leonardpahlke]

No updates from my side. Thanks for the reminder Emily. Apologies for not getting to it again by now. Have time next week to push this further - will update within the week, thanks all 👍

[rajaskakodkar]

Collaborated with @nikhita to identify open items, suggestions and ideas in the ongoing working doc

Next steps:

• @nikhita to send an invite for contributors of this effort to meet and chalk out the proposal
• Present the proposal in TOC meeting for review and consensus
• Get approval from TOC and the community

[nikhita]

@nikhita to send an invite for contributors of this effort to meet and chalk out the proposal

Discussing this on slack here.

[leonardpahlke]

filled the gaps in my section. ready to be discussed during our upcoming sync. then we could write some bulletpoints and links out into plain text. 👍 i was also thinking about writing some lead guide in the format of a blog post (cncf blog)

[TheFoxAtWork]

@rajaskakodkar @nikhita @leonardpahlke wanted to check in on this. When would the group be ready to present recommendations on a TOC call?

[leonardpahlke]

We met yesterday after the TOC meeting to start discussing what we async worked on. @nikhita mentioned scheduling additional meetings. If we focus on one part of the scope of the WG, we can probably put something up for discussion by next TOC meeting, which should be next month right.

• Meeting notes Aug 6

[TheFoxAtWork]

august 20th is the next closest public meeting, after that is Sept 17th, where we have a linkerd checkin scheduled. would either of those work.

[TheFoxAtWork]

@nikhita can we get a lightweight version roughed in before KubeCon?

[linsun]

#1195 is intended to fix portion of this.