Going for Graduation: Crossing the Chasm

The presentation discusses the importance of project maturity and the steps that need to be taken to achieve it within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

• Project maturity is crucial for success within the CNCF
• Security is a top priority and projects must undergo independent security audits and fix critical vulnerabilities
• Clear and explicit definitions for project usage and contribution are necessary
• Adoption, security, and contribution are the three main categories for achieving project maturity
• Collaboration with Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs) is important for improving contributor base and project security
• Archiving is a natural process and lessons learned should be applied to other projects within the foundation

The speaker mentions the importance of having a clear path for contributors to approach a project and contribute. This can be achieved through a governance.md file that outlines the process and contains references to existing and emeritus committers. Additionally, having a list of real-world use cases and case studies can help make the best judgment on project maturity.

Sandbox, incubation, graduation. These are the three maturity stages for the 147 (at the time of writing) projects under the CNCF umbrella. While the formal process to go from one stage to the next is written down in the TOC repo, it isn’t just a check the box process and each community will have its own journey. This talk from a current TOC member and maintainer of a project applying for graduation will break down, from both sides of the table, what it takes to build a successful project and community to finally cross the chasm to graduation. The audience will learn: 1. What the graduation process looks like 2. When you should get started with the process 3. How to prepare for each of the graduation requirements 4. What resources are available to projects getting ready for graduation