golem-architecture

Abstract

This is proposal to structure the proceedings of Golem Tech Council in order to streamline the flow of related work items and make the approval process efficient.

Motivation

The purpose is to ensure the Tech Council operates efficiently, with as few synchronous actions (like meetings) as possible, and with transparency to all Golem Factory team members.

Specification

The main purpose of this proposed process is to make proceedings of Tech Council items more efficient and asynchronous (eg. have them raised and reviewed offline, and only use Tech Council sessions to discuss questions on items which have been already digested by participants).

This is why the responsibilities of the Facilitator also must include upfront facilitation of the Tech Council session’s topic so that the participants are given an early heads-up and are able to prepare for the session (eg. by reading and reviewing proposed topic).

This section specifies the rules for Tech Council proceedings, by defining key elements and workflow.

Tech Council Members

Two roles of Tech Council members are specified:

Participant - participant of Tech Council proceedings and sessions (note that any Golem Factory team member may participate in Tech Council sessions & discussions) - responsible for:
- technically review proposed topics before Tech Council session
- raise questions, concerns, proposals, and challenge topic on Tech Council sessions
Facilitator - responsible for:
- reviewing and managing the GAP board
- preparing topic for Tech Council sessions
- facilitating Tech Council sessions

Tech Council GAP board

A GitHub’s GAP Project board where all Tech Council items are recorded and their status indicated.

Raising items for Tech Council

The topics for discussion by Tech Council can be raised by any Tech Council member, in a form of:

A issue in golem-architecture repo

NOTE: issue raised in this way should include following elements at minimum:
- Indicative title
- Description sufficient to set the context and topic of the item in detail allowing for readers to understand and build opinion on the matter.
- Indication of expected input from Tech Council (ie. what is Tech Council expected to do with this item?)
A GAP item

Just raise a GAP as per GAP Process

The newly raised topics shall be reviewed by the Facilitator and dedicated if/when Tech Council session (wth comments if relevant) should be scheduled.

Note that Facilitator is not only responsible for raising items for Tech Council. Participants strongly encouraged to raise items for Tech Council asynchronously, without hard-dependency on Facilitator.

Tech Council Session

A Tech Council session is an opportunity for participants to address the questions which have been raised against the Tech Council items.

A Tech Council session topic is selected by the Facilitator and announced to all participants at least 2 days prior to the scheduled session, via email, for all interested parties to be able to join.
Selected topic require its authors to be present in the session.
The session should cover the topic, aiming to:
- approve the item (by pushing it to next stage of its workflow as per its GAP board)
- respond to the author of the item requesting for eg. more details, or response to specific question
- reject the item
- setup an offline working group to provide more details for the item
- other, unusual actions.

Rationale

This proposal is a response to Tech Council approach whereby all Tech Council members were meeting weekly and viewing/reading/explaining the status of all items on Kanban board. This approach was inefficient. With further changes to have bi-weekly Tech Council sessions, they were abandoned after some time. Later, incidental Tech Council-ish sessions regarding specific GAP with on-demand sessions shown more value than previous process iterations.

Backwards Compatibility

There is no backward compatibility issue - we are proposing to improve the process and leave no dependencies on its previous shape.

Test Cases

N/A

Security Considerations

The proceedings of Tech Council are to happen using online conferencing, GAPs and documents which all comply with Golem Factory’s information security policies.