Community-Driven Development - The Change Review Board Robert Ferraro ESMF Community Meeting May 23, 2006 Climate Data Assimilation Weather

Outline What is the ESMF Change Review Board? How does it function? How can you contribute?

ESMF Change Review Board Established to provide user community guidance to the continuing development of ESMF functionality Sets the schedule and expectations for future functionality enhancements in ESMF internal and public distributions ◦Based on user community and stakeholder input ◦Constrained by available developer resources ◦Updated quarterly to reflect current realities Reviews and approves internal releases to assure that adequate alpha testing has been completed Reviews and approves public releases to assure that adequate beta testing has been completed

The Change Review Board Process Gather community and stakeholder input ◦Special joint CRB/JST telecon prior to each CRB meeting ◦Ad-hoc consultation by CRB members with their respective communities and stakeholders Meet quarterly to review and update the development schedule ◦Review and approve (sometimes with adjustments) the next internal release ◦Review community inputs, and add development tasks to the schedule based on this input ◦Adjust the future release schedule based on current realities and changing priorities Publish the updated schedule on the ESMF CRB web page ◦ ◦ Or Navigate from the ESMF main page via the “Management” sidebar link

The Development Schedule This is the list of all tasks that the CRB tracks and schedules The Schedule plans 3 internal releases into the future Tasks scheduled for this release The release will be delayed if this task is not completed If this task is not done in time, it will be deferred to the next release This functionality is being contributed by someone outside of the core development team It may or may not get done in time for the scheduled release This is the stable, beta tested release It includes all prior internally released and beta tested functionality May not be stable Beta testers are invited to hammer away!

Scheduling Tasks Why are there “unscheduled” tasks on the schedule? ◦The CRB defines development tasks for every suggested enhancement to the ESMF implementation ◦The core development team estimates the resources required to accomplish each task ◦The CRB places tasks into the next 3 internal releases based on priorities determined by the CRB, and the available developer resources ◦The lower priority tasks that don’t fit are carried as “unscheduled”

The CRB Membership Robert Ferraro, Chair NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mark Iredell NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction Alan Wallcraft Naval Research Laboratory Thomas Clune NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Chris Hill Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mariana Vertenstein National Center for Atmospheric Research Atanas Trayanov NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Cecelia DeLuca, ex officio National Center for Atmospheric Research Members are appointed by the ESMF Execute Board to 1 year renewable terms Members represent the user community, not just their own institutions or agencies

How You Can Influence The Process Join a joint CRB/JST Telecon ◦The telecon is announced on the JST loop ◦CRB members attend to listen to users’ input User priorities Suggestions for new or modified functionality Contact a CRB member directly