Governance Processes

The following processes describe how project plans and decisions are made. The Stewarding Organization is responsible for facilitating these processes.

• Product planning and prioritization

• Product design decisions

• Technical design decisions

Product Planning and Prioritization

Project-wide planning and prioritization is managed by the Product Design Committee and is dictated by the needs of Users and Member Organizations. Quarterly product roadmap decisions are planned and prioritized as follows:

1. Feature requests are submitted as new issues via GitHub.

   • Ideas and proposals for new features may initially be shared ad-hoc in meetings or via other communication channels, but a Maintainer from the Product Design Committee is responsible for consolidating them into the GitHub issue tracker.

2. Initial prioritization and consolidation against the current product roadmap is done weekly by the Product Design committee.

3. Final prioritization is informed by feedback from key sources:

   • Member Organizations: Product needs and relative importance of features.

   • Governance Committee: Collective prioritization of features.

   • Technical Design Committee: Technical feasibility and level-of-effort of features.

   • Users: Detailed needs and requirements for a given feature.

   • Broader observed trends across the government and technical landscape.

   Mechanisms for feedback include:

   • Direct consultation with Member Organizations.

   • Discussion or polls via email lists and Slack.

   • Demos, reviews, and discussions in Governance Committee meetings.

   • Remaining ambiguities should be resolved by agreed-upon prioritization criteria.

4. Approval of product roadmap on a quarterly basis through simple majority vote by Member Organizations in the Governance Committee.

   RACI for Product Planning & Prioritization

   Committee	Initial Prioritization	Final Prioritization	Approval
   Governance	Informed	Consulted	Accountable
   Product Design	Responsible	Responsible	Responsible
   Technical Design	Informed	Consulted	Informed

Product Design Decisions

The design of major product features must be developed publicly and collaboratively across the project. The following process describes how new features should be designed, reviewed, and approved:

1. Product Requirements Documents (PRDs) are developed and authored by members of the Product Design Committee. Initial authorship is informed by research among Users and Member Organizations.

2. PRDs are reviewed for a period of up to X weeks by the Governance and Technical Design Committees.

3. PRDs are finalized after incorporating feedback from reviewers. Finalized PRDs are saved in the Public Drive and added as links in the public product roadmap.

4. PRDs are approved by simple majority vote from Member Organizations in the Governance Committee.

   RACI for Product Design Decisions

   Committee	Author PRDs	Review	Finalize	Approve
   Governance	Informed	Responsible	Consulted	Accountable
   Product Design	Responsible	Responsible	Responsible	Responsible
   Technical Design	Informed	Responsible	Consulted	Informed

Technical Design Decisions

Major technical design decisions are reviewed and approved by a majority of the Technical Design Committee. The committee holds ad hoc forums for maintainers to advise contributors on technical decisions and will determine what constitutes a major technical design decision by majority vote if necessary.

Types of technical design decisions that require approval:

• Authentication & authorization (e.g. User Account identification)

• Technical aspects of new features (e.g. program discovery or automated eligibility screening system)

• Major changes to existing features (e.g. Admin UX overhaul)

• Major changes to technical approach (e.g. introducing a new library, tool, or major software design pattern)

• How new infrastructure will connect with existing infrastructure (e.g. API design)

  RACI for Technical Design Decisions

  Committee	Author TDDs	Review	Finalize	Approve
  Governance	Informed	Consulted	Consulted	Informed
  Product Design	Consulted	Consulted	Consulted	Consulted
  Technical Design	Responsible	Responsible	Responsible	Accountable

Technical Design Process

This section outlines the process for features that require a technical design document. The purpose of a design document is to draft and approve major technical design decisions to ensure the quality, reliability, and maintainability of CiviForm for all its users.

Before You Start

The following should be true:

1. There is an open issue in GitHub

2. There is an approved PRD in the public folder

3. If the issue has a UX label, approved UX Mocks are added to the public folder

4. A Ready for TDD label is added to the issue and visible in this list

During the CiviForm engineering weekly meeting on Mondays, we review the issues with the Ready for TDD label and assign an author, approvers and reviewers. If an urgent issue arises that does require a TDD and we cannot wait until the next weekly meeting, assignment may be done during the week, either in a daily status meeting or by discussing in the engineering slack channel.

Two approvals are required to move forward with a design. At least one member of the Stewarding Organization should be assigned. From there, please assign available contributors who have domain expertise relevant to the issue.

Stewarding Organization members who are not also approvers and any available and interested contributor may be a reviewer on the document. Approval of reviewers is not required, however the design will benefit from constructive and critical feedback. To that end, aim for a sum total of five reviewers when possible, including approvers.

Working with the Doc

1. Go to this drive and take one of the "Copy of Design Doc Template" docs or make a copy of "Design Doc Template".

2. Using the template, create a technical design document. Please remove any sections that aren't relevant and add any that may be missing.

3. When your draft is ready for review:

   1. Update the status to IN REVIEW

   2. Notifiy the approvers and reviewers that the doc is ready for review.

4. Approvers and reviewers will add comments and questions to start discussion

5. Iterate on the design until you have approval

After Approval 🚀

At this point the issue should be prioritized and implementation can begin according to its priority.