Welcome to the LF Energy Foundation as a new project or working group. The LF Energy Foundation provides a number of services and tools to help your project get off the ground and be successful. Here's how to get started.
Setting up the Infrastructure
Your project will be able to leverage the LFX Project Control Center (PCC) for managing the collaboration and development infrastructure for your project.
To get this going, you will need to provide a list of individuals and their email addresses who will be the initial members of the Technical Steering Committee, Steering Committee, or Working Group. Once that is done the next steps are to work with the group to schedule a kickoff meeting, where a member of the LF Energy team will help guide the group on its purpose and role, identify an initial lead, and set a cadence for future meetings.
During the kickoff meeting, there will be a review of the various project infrastructure pieces, namely...
- Mailing lists; generally we set up a primary discussion list and sometimes a private list if needed.
- The slack channel added to the LF Energy Slack organization ( https://slack.lfenergy.org )
- The transition of any existing code into a project-managed location. Generally, projects establish a new GitHub organization, and the LF Energy staff can help get this going for the project with all the right settings and integrations in place. LF Energy staff will also coordinate a license scan as part of the transfer to identify any key concerns ( more details at License Scanning and Analysis Support Program )
- Set up a wiki space under the LF Energy Confluence site, if desired.
- Identifying any other project accounts or services, and ensuring those credentials are held in the LF Energy 1Password account with access provided to the relevant project members and LF Energy staff ( for continuity purposes )
- Enable services such as LFX Insights and LFX Security for the project.
- Ensure the project leads are set up to maintain the PCC entry for the project.
Establish Project Governance
A key piece of the onboarding is for the project to establish governance for the activities of the project. A public, transparent governance helps others understand the rules of engagement and how the project works, as well as helps guide project leaders and maintainers as the project grows to ensure smooth operations.
The first piece of the governance is the technical charter, which establishes the project entity. During the kickoff meeting, there will be a review of the technical charter and any other legal documents needed to establish the project entity. For working groups, there will likely be a simpler charter that defines the purpose of the working group, goals, non-goals, and deliverables, which will be approved by the TAC prior to moving forward on any work.
All projects and working groups should establish day-to-day governance and processes which build on the charter. Key ingredients should include...
- A LICENSE file in every code repository or primary location for deliverables, with the license chosen as an OSI-approved license or Creative Commons if appropriate
- A README file welcoming new community members to the project and explaining why the project and working group are useful and how to get started.
- A CONTRIBUTING file explaining to other developers and your community of users how to contribute to the project. The file should explain what types of contributions are needed and how the process works.
- A CODEOWNERS or COMMITTERS file to define individuals or teams that are responsible for code in a repository; document current project owners and current and emeritus committers.
- A CODE_OF_CONDUCT file that sets the ground rules for participants’ behavior associated and helps to facilitate a friendly, welcoming environment. By default, projects should leverage the Linux Foundation Code of Conduct unless an alternate Code of Conduct is approved prior.
- A RELEASE file that provides documentation on the release methodology, cadence, criteria, etc.
- A GOVERNANCE file that documents the project’s governance policies and procedures.
- A SUPPORT file to let users and developers know about ways to get help with your project.
There are templates of these files available at https://github.com/lf-energy/tsc-template. It's recommended to either establish these files within the project's GitHub repository or at a minimum point to those files from the GitHub repository to the project website, documentation, or wiki page. Working groups should establish these policies in the provided wiki space on the LF Energy wiki that is used for collaboration.
Going to market
Once a project is out of the Sandbox stage and approved by the TAC for the next lifecycle stage, we will work with the project on getting started on the various go-to-market activities.
Two things immediate a project can do to get this going:
- Fill out the logo creative brief to have a project logo designed. The LF Creative Services team will provide a few options for review and work in tandem with the project to ensure it's a logo everyone likes. All project artwork will be added to the LF Energy Artwork repository for easy access for the project.
- Fill out the website and marketing questionnaire to have the webpage on the LF Energy site built out, along with the project announcement. The LF Energy marketing team will let the project review the content for both and allow the project to provide feedback and suggestions.
Generally, projects are announced in the following way.
- The project will be added to the LF Energy Landscape and LF Energy website project listing.
- A blog post announcing the project on the LF Energy blog.
- Inclusion in the next LF Energy momentum press announcement.
The LF Energy marketing team will also identify other opportunities for outreach at launch, including interviews, videos, webinars, and other event participation that make sense for the project.
Growing as a project
As an operating project or working group, you should review the lifecycle requirements to see how to move to the next stage of growth. The LF Energy staff is here to help and provide advice, support, and guidance along the way. Additionally, you should work with your TAC sponsor to help with industry connections and general advice on navigating the industry.
On an annual basis, projects come back to the TAC for a review to ensure the project is still at the right stage of maturity and to help the project identify any opportunities for growth and challenges faced; you can review the project review schedule for more details. In June and December, the LF Energy staff conducts a maintainer survey to get feedback on the overall program and ensure collectively that projects are being served appropriately.
Have questions?
The LF Energy staff is always here to help. Please create a request at the LF Energy Service Desk for any questions or concerns you might have.