# SIG Roles and Organizational Governance

This charter adheres to the conventions described in the [Kubernetes Charter README].
It will be updated as needed to meet the current needs of the Kubernetes project.

In order to standardize Special Interest Group efforts, create maximum
transparency, and route contributors to the appropriate SIG, SIGs should follow
these guidelines:

- Have an approved Charter [SIG charter process]
- Meet regularly, at least for 30 minutes every 3 weeks, except November and
December
- Keep up-to-date meeting notes, linked from the SIG's page in the community
repo
- Record meetings and make them publicly available on the
[Kubernetes Community YouTube playlist]  
- Report activity with the community via the dev@kubernetes.io mailing list at
least once a year. 
  - This is separate from the [annual report]. 
- Participate in release planning meetings and retrospectives, and burndown
meetings, as needed
- Ensure related work happens in a project-owned github org and repository, with
 code and tests explicitly owned and supported by the SIG, including issue
 triage, PR reviews, test-failure response, bug fixes, etc.
- Use the [forums provided] as the primary means of working, communicating, and
collaborating, as opposed to private emails and meetings  
- Ensure contributing instructions (CONTRIBUTING.md) are defined in the SIGs
folder located in the Kubernetes/community repo if the groups contributor steps
and experience are different or more in-depth than the documentation listed in
the general [contributor guide] and [devel] folder.  
- Help and sponsor working groups that the SIG is interested in investing in  
- Track and identify all SIG features in the current release and [k/enhancements]

The process for setting up a SIG or Working Group (WG) is listed in the
[sig-wg-lifecycle] document.

## Roles

### Notes on Roles

Within this section "Lead" refers to someone who is a member of the union
 of a Chair, Tech Lead or Subproject Owner role. There is no one lead to any
 Kubernetes community group. Leads have specific decision making power over some
 part of a group and thus additional accountability. Each role is detailed below.  

- Initial roles are defined at the founding of the SIG or Subproject as part
of the acceptance of that SIG or Subproject.

#### Activity Expectations  

- Leads *SHOULD* remain active and responsive in their Roles.
- Leads taking an extended leave of 1 or more months *SHOULD* coordinate with other leads to ensure the role is adequately staffed during the leave.
- Leads going on leave for 1-3 months *MAY* work with other Leads to identify a temporary replacement.
- Leads of a role *SHOULD* remove any other leads or roles that have not communicated a leave of absence and either cannot be reached for more than 1 month or are not fulfilling their documented responsibilities for more than 1 month.
  - This may be done through a [super-majority] vote of Leads. If there are not enough *active* Leads, then a [super-majority] vote between Chairs, Tech Leads and Subproject Owners may decide the removal of the Lead.

#### Requirements

- Leads *MUST* be at least a ["member" on our contributor ladder] to
be eligible to hold a leadership role within a SIG.
- SIGs *MAY* prefer various levels of domain knowledge depending on the
role. This should be documented.  
- People management interests - there's a lot of us!

#### Escalations

- Lead membership disagreements *MAY* be escalated to the SIG Chairs. SIG Chair
membership disagreements may be escalated to the Steering Committee.

#### On-boarding and Off-boarding Leads

- Leads *MAY* decide to step down at anytime and propose a replacement.  Use
lazy consensus amongst other Leads with fallback on majority vote to accept
proposal.  The candidate *SHOULD* be supported by a majority of SIG contributors
 or the Subproject contributors (as applicable).
- Leads *MAY* select additional leads through a [super-majority] vote
amongst leads. This *SHOULD* be supported by a majority of SIG contributors or
Subproject contributors (as applicable).

### Chair

- Number: 2-3
- Membership tracked in [sigs.yaml]  
  - If no tech lead role is present, Chair assumes responsibilities from [#tech-lead] section.
  
  In addition, run operations and processes governing the SIG:

- *SHOULD* define how priorities and commitments are managed and delegate to other leads as needed
- *SHOULD* drive charter changes (including creation) to get community buy-in but *MAY* delegate content creation to SIG contributors
- *SHOULD* identify, track, and maintain the SIGs enhancements for current
  release and serve as point of contact for the release team, but *MAY* delegate
   to another Lead to fulfill these responsibilities
  - *MAY* delegate the creation of a SIG roadmap to other Leads
  - *MUST* organize a main group meeting and make sure [sigs.yaml] is up to date
  including subprojects and their meeting information but *SHOULD* delegate the
  need for subproject meetings to subproject owners  
  - *SHOULD* facilitate meetings but *MAY* delegate to other Leads or future
  chairs/chairs in training
  - *MUST* ensure there is a maintained CONTRIBUTING.md document in the
  appropriate SIG folder if the contributor experience or on-boarding knowledge
  is different than in the general [contributor guide]. *MAY* delegate to
  contributors to create or update.
  - *MUST* organize KubeCon/CloudNativeCon Intros and Deep Dives with CNCF Event
   staff and approve presented content but *MAY* delegate to other contributors
   to create material and present  
  - *MUST* ensure meetings are recorded and made available
  - *MUST* report activity with the community via k-dev mailing list at least
  once a quarter (slides, video from kubecon, etc)
  - *MUST* coordinate sponsored working group updates to the SIG and the wider
  community  
- *MUST* coordinate communication and be a connector with other community
 groups like SIGs and the Steering Committee but *MAY* delegate the actual
 communication and creation of content to other contributors where
 appropriate  
- *MUST* present yearly [annual report] for the group but *SHOULD* get help with
curation from other SIG participants

### Tech Lead

- *Optional Role*: SIG Technical Leads
  - Establish new subprojects
  - Decommission existing subprojects
  - Resolve X-Subproject technical issues and decisions
  - Number: 2-3
  - Membership tracked in [sigs.yaml]
  - Role description in [technical-lead.md]

### Subproject Owner

- Subproject Owners
  - Scoped to a subproject defined in [sigs.yaml]
  - Seed leads and contributors established at subproject founding
  - *SHOULD* be an escalation point for technical discussions and decisions in
  the subproject
  - *SHOULD* set milestone priorities or delegate this responsibility
  - Number: 2-3
  - Membership tracked in [sigs.yaml]

### All Leads

- *SHOULD* maintain health of at least one subproject or the health of the SIG
- *SHOULD* show sustained contributions to at least one subproject or to the
  SIG
- *SHOULD* hold some documented role or responsibility in the SIG and / or at
  least one subproject
    (e.g. reviewer, approver, etc)
- *MAY* build new functionality for subprojects
- *MAY* participate in decision making for the subprojects they hold roles in
- Includes all reviewers and approvers in [OWNERS] files for subprojects
- *MUST* take an [Inclusive Open Source Community Orientation course] in support of our community values
within 30 days from the date of their appointment.

### Security Contact

- Security Contact
  - *MUST* be a contact point for the Product Security Committee to reach out to
   for triaging and handling of incoming issues
  - *MUST* accept the [Embargo Policy]
  - Defined in `SECURITY_CONTACTS` files, this is only relevant to the root file
   in the repository. Template [SECURITY_CONTACTS]

### Other Roles
This governance document outlines the required roles for SIGs: Chair and Tech
Lead; however, SIGs are allowed to operate how they see fit outside of minimum 
governance requirements, including defining more roles to sustain the group. If 
a SIG needs to change the Chair and Tech Lead position to include or remove
duties, this needs to be approved by the Steering Committee. Newly created roles
that don't assume any responsibility of Chair and/or Tech Lead should follow
the governing processes in the SIGs charter. 

Example of SIG roles created to help operations:

- [The Release Team: Bug Triage, CI Signal, and more]  
- [API Reviewer and Moderator]   
- [Production Readiness Reviewer]  
- [Events Lead]  
- [PR Wrangler] 
- [Marketing Council]

Other roles...
- *MUST* be tracked on the SIGs README with a link to the role definition
- *MUST* have the Steering Committees approval to proceed with roles that assume
duties from Chairs and/or Tech Leads on a non-temporary basis 
- *SHOULD* be documented in SIG charters if the role has delegation away from a
sig-governance.md listed role 
- *SHOULD* be sent to dev@kubernetes.io for awareness as a notice 
and a lazy consensus period when they are newly created 
- *MAY* Fill in for another named role on a temporary basis 
#### Subproject Creation

---

Option 1: by SIG Technical Leads

- Subprojects may be created by [KEP] proposal and accepted by [lazy-consensus] with fallback on majority vote of
  SIG Technical Leads.  The result *SHOULD* be supported by the majority of SIG Leads.
  - KEP *MUST* establish subproject owners
  - [sigs.yaml] *MUST* be updated to include subproject information and [OWNERS] files with subproject owners
  - Where subprojects processes differ from the SIG governance, they must document how
    - e.g. if subprojects release separately - they must document how release and planning is performed

Option 2: by Federation of Subprojects

- Subprojects may be created by [KEP] proposal and accepted by [lazy-consensus] with fallback on majority vote of
  subproject owners in the SIG.  The result *SHOULD* be supported by the majority of leads.
  - KEP *MUST* establish subproject owners
  - [sigs.yaml] *MUST* be updated to include subproject information and [OWNERS] files with subproject owners
  - Where subprojects processes differ from the SIG governance, they must document how
    - e.g. if subprojects release separately - they must document how release and planning is performed

Subprojects may create repos under *github.com/kubernetes-sigs* through [lazy-consensus] of subproject owners.

---

- Subprojects must define how releases are performed and milestones are set.  Example:

> - Release milestones
>   - Follows the kubernetes/kubernetes release milestones and schedule
>   - Priorities for upcoming release are discussed during the SIG meeting following the preceding release and shared through a PR. Priorities are finalized before feature freeze.
> - Code and artifacts are published as part of the kubernetes/kubernetes release

### Technical processes

Subprojects of the SIG *MUST* use the following processes unless explicitly following alternatives
they have defined.

- Proposing and making decisions
  - Proposals sent as [KEP] PRs and published to googlegroup as announcement
  - Follow [KEP] decision making process

- Test health
  - Canonical health of code published to [dashboard]
  - Consistently broken tests automatically send an alert to their google group.
  - SIG contributors are responsible for responding to broken tests alert. PRs that break tests should be rolled back if not fixed within 24 hours (business hours).
  - Test dashboard checked and reviewed at start of each SIG meeting.  Owners assigned for any broken tests and followed up during the next SIG meeting.

Issues impacting multiple subprojects in the SIG should be resolved by either:

- Option 1: SIG Technical Leads
- Option 2: Federation of Subproject Owners

### SIG Retirement

- In the event that the SIG is unable to regularly establish consistent quorum
  or otherwise fulfill its Organizational Management responsibilities
  - after 3 or more months it *SHOULD* be retired
  - after 6 or more months it *MUST* be retired

[k/enhancements]: https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements
[forums provided]: /communication/README.md
[lazy-consensus]: http://en.osswiki.info/concepts/lazy_consensus
[super-majority]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajority#Two-thirds_vote
[KEP]: https://git.k8s.io/enhancements/keps/NNNN-kep-template/README.md
[sigs.yaml]: /sigs.yaml
[OWNERS]: contributors/devel/owners.md
[SIG Charter process]: https://git.k8s.io/community/committee-steering/governance/README.md
[Kubernetes Charter README]: https://git.k8s.io/community/committee-steering/governance/README.md
[Embargo Policy]: https://git.k8s.io/security/private-distributors-list.md#embargo-policy
[SECURITY_CONTACTS]: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes-template-project/blob/master/SECURITY_CONTACTS
[sig-wg-lifecycle]: /sig-wg-lifecycle.md
["member" on our contributor ladder]: /community-membership.md
[Kubernetes Community YouTube playlist]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ2bu0qutTOM0tHYa_jkIwg
[annual report]: ./annual-reports.md
[contributor guide]: /contributors/guide/README.md
[devel]: /contributors/devel/README.md
[#tech-lead]: #Tech-Lead
[Google group]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/kubernetes-sig-config
[dashboard]: https://testgrid.k8s.io/
[The Release Team: Bug Triage, CI Signal, and more]: https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/tree/master/release-team/role-handbooks
[Production Readiness Reviewer]: /sig-architecture/production-readiness.md#becoming-a-prod-readiness-reviewer-or-approver
[API Reviewer and Moderator]: /sig-architecture/api-review-process.md#expanding-the-reviewer-and-approver-pool
[Marketing Council]: /communication/marketing-team/role-handbooks/council.md
[Events Lead]: /events/events-team/events-lead.md
[PR Wrangler]: https://kubernetes.io/docs/contribute/participate/pr-wranglers/
[Inclusive Open Source Community Orientation course]: https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/inclusive-open-source-community-orientation-lfc102/
[technical-lead.md]: /contributors/chairs-and-techleads/technical-lead.md
