Roles within the TAG

The TAG includes several key roles that are critical to the group’s success. The group will have many members, all serving in varying capacities. Within this document, “member” may refer to a Chair, a Technical Lead, or other Member roles.

The following is the current listing of member roles:

All members are identified in the TAG README, with annotations where they hold an additional role.

Members fulfilling any Roles in Security TAG are responsible for understanding and abiding the by the governance and policies defined in this group. This commitment and execution of understanding includes not only commits to the repo, but also to any approvals or direction required by their Role.

Write access to the repo: Where applicable, the following roles define specific areas of the repo or actions on issues where changes require write access. In any case, governance is not enforced by access permissions, but rather by members who are expected to thoughtfully consider their actions to support the group.

Role of members

  • The primary role of a member is to contribute expertise to the group.
  • To add yourself as a member, submit a Pull Request (PR) adding yourself to the list of members.

Maintaining active members

  • Members SHOULD remain active and responsive in their Roles.
  • Members taking an extended leave of 1 or more months SHOULD coordinate with other members to ensure the role is adequately staffed during the leave.
  • Members going on leave for 1-3 months MAY work with other members to identify a temporary replacement.
  • Members of a role SHOULD remove any other members 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 members, or if there are not enough active members to get a super-majority of votes cast, then removal may occur through a super-majority vote of the Chairs.
  • Members contribute to projects, according to the standard group process.

Managing membership

  • Membership disagreements may be escalated to the Chairs. Disagreements among the Chairs may be escalated to a Security TAG TOC Liaison.
  • Members MAY decide to step down at anytime and optionally propose a replacement.

Role of chairs

While CNCF TOC allows for Chairs to serve in purely administrative roles, The Security TAG was formed with deeply technical Chairs based on early need to navigate a complex security landscape. If the TAG has less than two Technical Leads, any Chair may act as Technical Lead.

  • Primary role of Chairs is to run operations and the governance of the group.
  • The Chairs are responsible for ensuring that group meetings are planned and facilitated effectively, while also engaging group members in leadership roles. Effective facilitation includes (but is not limited to) the following activities:
    • setting the agenda for meetings
    • extending discussion via asynchronous communication to be inclusive of members who cannot attend a specific meeting time.
    • scheduling discussion of proposals that have been submitted
    • asking for new proposals to be made to address an identified need
    • partnering with Technical Leads to establish a roadmap and manage ongoing projects
    • serving as Security TAG leadership representative to ensure the project and project lead(s) is successful
      • check in with the project lead regularly to discuss progress, blockers, and updates
      • provide mentorship to project lead(s)
      • ensure the schedule set by the project lead(s) is adhered to
      • verify the scope and proposed deliverables of the project are in alignment with the Charter prior to recommendation of becoming a project
      • provide the TOC and others on the leadership team with updates
      • keep the issue up to date for the project lead(s) if they don’t have write access to do so
      • enforce and encourage company diversity on a given project where possible
      • provide guardrails and guidance to the project and project lead(s) as appropriate

Role of technical leads

Technical Leads (TLs) expand the bandwidth of the leadership team. Proposals must have a TL or Chair working as an active sponsor (as detailed in TAG process).

The general list of activities for TL are:

  • Establish new sub-projects
  • Decommission existing sub-projects
  • Resolve cross-sub-project technical issues and decisions
  • Propose agenda items for meetings to ensure that open issues are discussed with the group when needed
  • serving as Security TAG leadership representative to ensure the project and project lead(s) is successful
    • check in with the project lead regularly to discuss progress, blockers, and updates
      • provide mentorship to project lead(s)
      • ensure the schedule set by the project lead(s) is adhered to
      • verify the scope and proposed deliverables of the project are in alignment with the Charter prior to recommendation of becoming a project
      • provide the Chairs and others on the leadership team with updates
      • keep the issue up to date for the project lead(s) if they don’t have write access to do so
      • enforce and encourage company diversity on a given project where possible
      • provide guardrails and guidance to the project and project lead(s) as appropriate

TLs are assigned by CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (see CNCF TAG Tech Lead nomination and election process).

Role of chair emeriti

After a Chair finishes their term, they transition into a role of Chair Emeritus. This allows previous Chairs to continue to chime in and provide valuable context and contributions to the TAG. A Chair Emeritus can assume a role of a technical lead, but in doing so, must be active in communicating with the co-chairs and technical leads (i.e. participating in the chair/TL slack and meetings). A Chair Emeritus has the same permissions/access as technical leads.

Role of project leads

Project Leads lead specific projects where a deliverable has been defined within the issue.

Project Leads are nominated and approved by the process defined within our governance process.

Project leads are expected to:

  • set the meetings for the project
  • drive the agenda of the project meetings
  • lead meetings and coordinate for a prepared back up prior to meetings if they cannot make a meeting
  • provide technical direction unique to the project
  • establish the project schedule
  • modify the schedule
  • garner participation
  • keep the project moving forward
  • establish documents and correct permissions for contributions to occur
  • contribute content
  • provide the Security TAG leadership representative assigned or their designated back up with updates, progress, and blocker on the project

On-going projects

On the occasion where a project becomes long term, Project Leads are also given the OWNER role of the directory or sub-directory along with 1 other nominated individual to ensure continuity in review and ongoing support of the project.

Depending on the expected length of the project, Project Leads may be assigned as OWNERS of the project directory or sub-directory in this repository to help facilitate and moderate new content to the project. The sponsor of the project or their delegate initiates the PR to create the new directory and update the OWNERS file.

Duties of a project lead

Project leads are responsible for the following:

  • Adhering to the project process
  • Proposing and refining the project scope, goal and schedule
  • Ensure smooth day-to-day operations of the project. This includes:
    • Ensuring meetings are scheduled, announced and recorded
    • Facilitation of meetings, ensuring minutes are recorded
  • Ensure progress and status reports are communicated to the STAG representative of the project
  • Resolving conflict within the project and escalating to leadership when required
  • Outreach and recruitment for the project
  • Provide retrospective of a project to the STAG

Role of STAG representatives

STAG representatives are leadership executive sponsors of a project. The STAG representative acts as a point of liaison with the STAG leadership team and takes on a role of mentorship for the project lead(s).

STAG representatives are required to be part of the STAG leadership team. This includes co-chairs, technical leads and co-chair emeritus roles. A STAG representative may be of capacity of an individual contributor but cannot be the project lead of the same project they are representing.

STAG representatives are appointed through the following process:

  • A member of the leadership indicates that they would like to be a STAG representative on a project by:
    • editing the issue’s “STAG Representative” field to their github ID.
    • setting the issue milestone to the corresponding milestone created for their github ID.
  • STAG representatives may change based on discretion of co-chairs.

Duties of a STAG representative

STAG representatives are responsible for the following:

  • Reporting back to the leadership on the status of the project, indicating when the project requires external governance help. For example, these include:
    • Project is understaffed or suffers from rampant scope creep.
    • Project is inactive and needs to be discontinued.
    • Inter-personal issues within leads and/or members causing disruption.
  • Provide feedback to project lead to whether the current scope and operation of a project is in line with the vision and governance of the STAG.
  • Mentorship of project leads on matters of leadership and governance process.
  • Provide privilege facilities that a project lead does not have access to. Examples are:
    • Creating a ServiceNow ticket with the CNCF for design help
    • Uploading of meeting recordings to youtube
    • Approval of messages to STAG mailing list

Role of Team Leads

Team Leads lead larger streams of work that require sustained effort and coordination and remain ongoing.

Teams must have a Chair sponsor to maintain visibility in the team’s work and to ensure it is progressing. The Chair sponsor also provides review and approval as part of the process whether be on engagement or deliverable publishing (such as with papers).

On-going projects may not imply a team, and in such case the leadership role described below to sustain and coordinate. The on-going project leadership position may have an alternate title, such as our initial “Security Assessment Facilitator.”

Team Leads are nominated and approved by the following process:

  1. Team Lead actively participates in the group, initiates the proposal or volunteers to lead a stream that has been prioritized by the group
  2. A Chair or TL nominates a candidate.
  3. The nomination is communicated via a pull request annotating the list of members in the TAG README with a link to the issue tracking the stream of work. The nomination is typically open for a week (but may be shorter with LGTM of at least two Chairs).
  4. Members are encouraged to review any existing, relevant issues and work together to ensure the Team Lead is set up for success or suggest alternatives.
  5. A sub-directory with a README is created with details on how to get involved.
  6. Team Leads will be given the OWNER role of the directory or sub-directory for their team’s activities in order to empower merge/approve.

This role may be subject to lead rotations.

TOC liaison

The CNCF TAG process identifies a TOC Liaison. The TAG Chairs are responsible for establishing effective communication with the TOC liaison, including further communication to the wider TOC upon request.

The TOC Liaison will occasionally prioritize TAG activities, as needed by the TOC, to further the CNCF mission.

Facilitation roles

Members often contribute by working in small groups that research and discuss options and then share their findings with the rest of the group in a presentation and typically contribute to the body of work in this repository (via Pull Request). Some tasks can be effectively executed by simply chiming in on a github issue and independently contributing a PR without any particular role or authorization.

This section describes roles where more coordination is helpful and the work benefits from identifying one or more members who will take on specific responsibilities. Our goal is to empower members to move forward independently, while defining an approval process designed to support communication and alignment across the wider group.

New roles in this section are typically defined after someone has acted in that role for some time informally, then proposed as an on-going role by Pull Request which must be approved by a majority of Chairs. Process clarifications are welcome and PRs can be approved by any single Chair.

This role may be subject to lead rotations.

Security review facilitator

Security Reviews are part of the ongoing work of the group and led by a Security Assessment Facilitator, who will:

  • coordinate security review leads for upcoming security assessments.
  • identify and recommend security reviewers.
  • contribute to process improvements.
  • review and merge PRs in the /assessments directory (ensuring co-chair review of significant process changes).
  • triage issues related to security assessments.

Meeting facilitator

The group meetings are an important part of community building and the facilitator ensures a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere. In keeping with these goals, the meeting facilitator has the following responsibilities:

  • prepares the meeting notes with template and agenda
  • coordinates with presenter, if applicable
  • ensures there are scribes
  • runs meeting check-in, including partner groups
  • leads the meeting through the agenda

Prerequisites:

  • active member
  • history of regular attendance

One or more of the following:

  • served in another facilitator role
  • leader on a project team
  • tech lead
  • co-chair

Any member who meets the above qualifications is encouraged to add themselves to the list of people in this role.

Meeting Scribe(s)

Each meeting must have at a minimal one scribe and preferable with two.

Scribe is expected to perform the following:

  • Plan to coordinate/review meeting Agenda with facilitator via Slack before start of meeting
  • Summarize discussions and capture into meeting notes (not transcribe verbatim)
  • Clarify and annotate actions as discussion progresses with assignee and due dates
  • Partner with Facilitator to capture major occurring items in the meeting
  • Add links to issues being discussed if not already in Agenda
  • Open new issues to track action items from meeting

Triage team

All members are expected to review Pull Requests (PRs), comment on issues, and provide meaningful feedback or helpful references.

Members who have contributed regularly, including discussion on multiple PRs and submitting PRs themselves, can volunteer to participate as a member of the Triage Team. Interested members should first join #tag-security-triage on Slack and flag issues that need attention, ask questions and volunteer to take on process improvement PRs that may arise.

When there is a vacancy or need additional help, they will ask on Slack for volunteers to officially join the team.

Each member of the Triage Team will:

  • assign labels to issues.
  • comment where issues need more detail.
  • recommend proposals or suggestions for discussion at working session meetings.
  • participate on #tag-security-triage slack channel.

Project teams

Some ongoing projects may have teams where members are identified for additional roles and may be required to have specific expertise. For visibility, these additional project roles are listed below:

Lead rotations

For certain facilitator roles, teams and projects that are ongoing, leadership rotations should be carried out every 6 months. This is to:

  • Ensure leadership continuity of projects and passing on of tribal knowledge
  • Ensure diverse perspective/breadth of knowledge
  • Prevention of commitment bias in projects
  • Provide more leadership opportunities for more community members

A facilitator role/project lead position should be a candidate for rotation if the project/facilitation task:

  • Exists for more than 6 months
  • Involves more than 1 person

Rotation process

The rotation process should start at least 2 weeks before a rotation is due.

  1. STAG representative will get feedback on potential candidates from current leads and through nominations from the STAG leadership
  2. Leads should recommend a number of potential candidates based on the current number of lead positions
  3. Based on the nominations, STAG leadership will decide on the next lead rotation
  4. STAG representative will reach out to nominated leads for acceptance of new role
  5. In the event that no rotation candidates are available, due to lack of nominations or unavailability of nominees, the current rotation cycle will be skipped. However, reconsideration/restructuring of the project or work will be raised and discussed between STAG co-chairs.
  6. Validation that proper transition has happened will be done by STAG representative.
  7. If there are multiple leads on a project, STAG leadership will work with current leads to decide how many leads should be rotated.