Development Process v2
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OpenAjax Alliance Development Process
NOTE: This wiki page is now obsolete. It had been used for development of version 2.0 of the Development Process. Version 2.0 has now been approved and has been posted on the OpenAjax Alliance Web site. Go to http://www.openajax.org/process/DevelopmentProcess.pdf for the most recent approved version of the Development Process.
Status of this document
- Most recent update - proposal for version 2.0: July 16, 2007
- Increase the number of days for working group proposal review from 5 days to 10 days
- Clarify that the Working Group Chair must determine if there is consensus within the Working Group that Material (such as Specifications) before deciding whether to advance the given Material for subsequent process steps (e.g., Release Review, member voting, and Steering Committee voting)
- Add definition of "Working Group Members with Active Standing", along with implications on voting procedures within a Working Group
- Minor editorial cleanups
- Approved version 1.0: Jan. 22, 2007
Purpose and Scope
This document describes the Development Process for the OpenAjax Alliance (the “Alliance”). In particular, it describes how the Membership, the Steering Committee and other stakeholders lead, influence, and collaborate with Working Groups to develop Materials.
While this document imposes requirements and constraints on the operation of Working Groups, the Development Process does not describe the internal operation of those teams, which is governed by the Working Group Charter.
The Steering Committee is responsible for maintaining this document; such committee must approve revisions.
The Working Group is responsible for ensuring that all Materials produced in accordance with this Development Process are made available to the Membership via an appropriate mechanism in a timely, effective manner.
Working Group Lifecycle
The Development of Materials is organized into a set of Working Groups. Each Working Group coordinates work on Material. Each Working Group has a Charter. The Charter describes the purpose, scope, work plan, and operational rules for the Working Group. The Steering Committee approves each Charter as part of approving the creation of a Working Group. Working Groups are expected to ensure that all Materials are publicly available.
To ensure transparency and predictability, each Working Group sequences through a series of Phases, with well-defined Phase Transition Reviews:
- a Proposal Phase that is initiated by a Declaration and culminates in a Creation Review, and
- an Implementation phase that culminates in one or more Release reviews.
A Working Group’s Chair is expected to take an active role in its reviews. The Membership is notified of reviews beforehand; every Member has the right to participate in any review in order to better understand the state of the Working Group and offer constructive feedback.
Following is a description of the Phases and transitions between Phases.
Proposal Phase
The Proposal Phase is initiated by a Declaration. This simply requires a Member to declare its interest in and rationale for establishing a Working Group and identifies the Proposal Lead. The Declaration provides a statement of the Working Group parameters in general terms. The Declaration is made available to the Membership via the membership zone of the OpenAjax Alliance website. Although the Proposal Phase only requires a Declaration for the phase to begin, it is strongly recommended that first drafts of the Working Group Proposal are available at the time of the Declaration.
The Proposal Phase is expected to last no less than thirty (30) days to provide all interested Members sufficient time to review and comment on the Proposal.
During the Proposal Phase, the Proposal Lead works with Members to produce a Working Group Proposal. The following actions are representative of what takes place in the Proposal Phase.
- Define Working Group name, goal, and description
- Define the Working Group’s scope in terms of explicit inclusions and explicit exclusions
- Identify potential new intellectual property that may be created by the Working Group
- Engage the Membership to solicit additional Working Group participation and ways the Working Group can be leveraged
- Write a Working Group Charter
- Recruit a Working Group Chair
The Proposal Phase culminates with a Creation Review. Prior to this review, the Proposal is disseminated to the Membership for comment and feedback. During this review, the Proposal is presented and discussed. This review provides an opportunity for Members to identify any intellectual property that would be subject to the IPR Policy.
A Creation Review is held as a telephone conference call open to all Members. All materials for the Creation Review including at a minimum the final draft of the Working Group Proposal and Charter must be made available to the Members no less than ten (10) working days prior to the date of the Creation Review.
After the Creation Review conference call, the Proposal Lead must decide whether to submit the Proposal to the Members for voting, pull back the Proposal for further work, or abandon the Proposal.
Member voting will be done electronically via an openly readable email list to which only members may write (the “Members Mailing List”) with a voting period of at least three (3) working days.
Any negative vote must be accompanied by an explanation of the Members’ concerns. A negative vote with no explanation is spurious and will not be counted. To resolve any negative vote the members of the Working Group and its Leader are expected to reply via the Members Mailing List. The goal is to achieve rough consensus through dialogue. However, it is the decision of the Steering Committee which is final and binding in creating the Working Group.
Upon completion of Member voting and completion of responses to negative votes, the Proposal Lead must decide whether to submit the Proposal to the Steering Committee for Approval, pull back the Proposal for further work, or abandon the Proposal.
Once the Proposal has been submitted to the Steering Committee for approval, the Steering Committee will vote on whether to create the Working Group as described in the Members Agreement. The decision of the Steering Committee on approving the creation of a Working Group is final and binding.
Once the Working Group is approved,
- The Working Group infrastructure is established.
- The Working Group establishes the initial list of Members participating.
At this point, the project transitions to the Implementation Phase.
Implementation Phase
The majority of a Working Group’s work is accomplished during its Implementation Phase. The implementation of the Materials for each Working Group is undertaken by its Members in coordination with its participating Members. The Working Group Chair maintains an online list of current Working Group Members and Working Group Members with Active Standing (see below for guidelines in determining Working Group Members with Active Standing), provides regular systematic status reporting to the Steering Committee, performs overall coordination, monitors progress against Working Group plan milestones, resolves issues involving dependencies between Working Groups, and publicizes all plans, documents, reports, and interactions to the Membership.
If the Working Group Chair discovers a need to change the work plan or scope of features in a substantial manner to cover material beyond what was approved as part of the Creation Review, then the Chair must initiate a new Proposal Phase to develop a revised Working Group Proposal. Following this new Proposal Phase, an additional Creation Review takes place on the revised Working Group Proposal.
When the Chair sees that a given Working Group Member is not participating at a sufficient level to warrant active standing, the Chair should notify all Working Group participants from the given organization and its Primary Contact to alert the given Member that it is in danger of losing its active standing. If after a reasonable period the Chair judges that there is continuing insufficient participation from the given Member, then the Chair should remove the given Member from active standing and notify the participants and Primary Contact from the given Member . If the Member disagrees with the judgment of the Chair, the Member organization may appeal to the Steering Committee via email to mailto:steeringcommittee@openajax.org. If an appeal is made, then the Steering Committee shall vote and its decision is binding. At any time, the Chair may restore a given Member to active standing if that Member has demonstrated appropriate levels of participation over a reasonable period of time. Note that a Member is still a Working Group Member even if it loses its active standing.
For all formal votes, the ideal is to arrive at an agreement that is acceptable to all, but the Chair can make a decision based on consensus (i.e., unanimity is not a requirement) and the decision of the Working Group Chair is final and binding. Formal objections to the Chair's decision can be raised only by Working Group Members with Active Standing and must be mailed to the Working Group's mailing list and accompanied by an explanation of the Working Group Member's concerns. A formal objection with no explanation is spurious and will not be counted. The Chair must reply to all formal objections via the Working Group's mailing list. The Chair must inform the Steering Committee of all formal objections.
For all major deliverables (i.e., Material such as Specifications) created within the Working Group, the development of each major deliverable culminates with a Release Review. The Release Review is conducted before each major release to verify that the key goals of the release have been accomplished. Before announcing the Release Review, the Chair must determine if there is consensus within the Working Group, possibly through a formal voting process among the members of the Working Group, that the Material is ready for this step. The review is conducted sufficiently before the target release date to allow time to respond to feedback.
A Release Review is held as a telephone conference call open to all OpenAjax Alliance Members. All materials for the Release Review including at a minimum the final draft of the Working Group’s Materials and Specifications must be made available to the Members no less than fifteen (15) working days prior to the date of the Release Review.
After the Release Review conference call, the Working Group Chair must determine if there is consensus within the Working Group, possibly through a formal voting process among the members of the Working Group, and then must decide whether to submit the Material to the OpenAjax Alliance Members for voting, return the Material and Specifications to the Working Group for further work, or abandon the work.
Member voting will be done electronically via an openly readable email list to which only members may write (the “Members Mailing List”) with a voting period of at least three (3) working days.
Any negative vote must be accompanied by an explanation of the Members’ concerns. A negative vote with no explanation is spurious and will not be counted. To resolve any negative vote the members of the Working Group and its Chair are expected to reply via the Members Mailing List. The goal is to achieve rough consensus through dialogue. However, it is the decision of the Steering Committee which is final and binding in the approval of a Working Group’s Specifications and related Materials.
Upon completion of Member voting and completion of Working Group responses to negative votes, the Working Group Chair must determine if there is consensus within the Working Group, possibly through a formal voting process among the members of the Working Group, and then must decide whether to submit the Material to the Steering Committee for approval, return the Material and Specifications to the Working Group for further work, or abandon the work.
Once Material has been submitted to the Steering Committee for approval, the Steering Committee will vote whether to Approve the Material as described in the Members Agreement. The decision of the Steering Committee on approving any Material or Specification is final and binding.
Steering Committee Guidelines
As part of its decision process relative to this Development Process, the Steering Committee shall take into account whether there is sufficient Member interest in Working Group Proposals and submitted Materials (e.g., positive votes from a sufficient number of Members, such as five [5]) and sufficient consensus among the Members (e.g., no negative votes or strong majority). All negative votes supported by explanation warrant careful consideration.
Guidelines for determining Working Group Members with Active Standing
Here are guidelines for Working Group Chairs to determine the list of Working Group Members with Active Standing:
- In addition to acting in accordance with the goals and Purpose of OpenAjax Alliance (as defined in the Members Agreement), Working Group Members with Active Standing participate in the Working Group on an ongoing basis with a serious commitment to the Working Group's Charter, including all of the following:
- attend most meetings of the Working Group
- provide deliverables or drafts of deliverables in a timely fashion
- maintain familiarity with the relevant documents of the Working Group, including minutes of past meetings
- follow discussions on relevant mailing list(s)
- Any of the following are reasons why the Chair may determine that a particular Working Group Member does not have Active Standing:
- the individual often misses meetings (distributed or face-to-face)
- the individual does not contribute on a regular basis (e.g., does not attend meetings, does not participate in email discussions, does not contribute to the wiki)
- the individual has not provided deliverables in a timely fashion
- the individual does not stay current with Working Group discussions
- Although all participants representing an organization SHOULD attend all meetings, attendance by one representative of an organization satisfies the meeting attendance requirement for all representatives of the organization.
- The above criteria MAY be relaxed if the Chair agrees that doing so will not set back the Working Group. For example, the attendance requirement can be relaxed for reasons of expense (e.g., cost of travel) or scheduling (for example, an exceptional teleconference is scheduled at 3:00 a.m. local time for the participant or occasional unavoidable personal scheduling conflict), but only if the participant demonstrates continued commitment to the charter and finds alternate ways to stay current with Working Group activities
