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Governance model

Source: vignettes/governance.Rmd
governance.Rmd

This document outlines the governance model for the aNCA project, detailing roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes to ensure effective management and collaboration within the project.

Overall

The aNCA project follows a “bazaar” Governance model - contributions are welcomed from anyone. Two approvals are required for any code change to be merged into the main branch. They have to come from the core team in order to allow merge (authors listed in the DESCRIPTION file and/or contributors provided with review rights). Optimally, one approval should be from someone with a technical/coding background, and the other from someone with domain expertise (NCA/PK). This ensures that both the technical integrity and the domain relevance of the contributions are maintained.

Unless there is any justified reason, all code changes accepted for the main branch are expected to be made via pull requests, pass all CI/CD checks and have no conflicts with the main branch.

Priority and decision making

The GitHub dashboard is used to track issues and tasks related to the project. Each issue is assigned a priority level based on its importance and urgency, following the MSCW method:

  • MUST - task of highest priority, must be implemented for the application to be usable and useful.
  • SHOULD - task that we should include in the ready product, but it will not be breaking if it is not implemented.
  • COULD - things that would be nice to have and useful, but not instrumental to the whole package.
  • WISH - ideas that are not valid for the time being, but are nevertheless cool and could become useful as the development progresses.

Decisions regarding an issue’s priority are made by authors and in first place the maintainer(s) of the project. However, input from the community is welcomed and encouraged, especially for issues that may impact a broader user base. External opinions can be gathered through comments on issues or discussions in the GitHub repository. The priority level should also be determined by the pre-defined roadmap goals for the project, as outlined in the roadmap document.

Governance commitments

All main authors listed in the DESCRIPTION, are expected to: - Have a 2FA enabled GitHub account, to ensure the security of the repository and its contents. Preferably, not using SMS as a 2FA method. - Decide an issue’s priority taking into consideration (although not uniquely) the roadmap goals for the project and popular opinions from the community. - Try to review and approve code changes in a timely manner, ensuring that the project maintains its momentum and continues to evolve effectively.

See also