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CommitteeRestructure
The CABLE roadmap (p41-43) recommended and defined the roles of a CABLE management committee, technical support group and coordinator. Current practise largely mirrors these recommendations, although technical support roles have largely fallen to only a couple of people.
As we approach the end of the Roadmap period (2012-2017) it is timely to review the functioning and membership of the CABLE committee to see if it could operate more effectively.
To maintain committee meetings at 1-2 hours in length, it is likely that more of the committee's work needs to take place outside of formal committee meetings and involve more people.
A proposal would be to have the committee made up of the leads of a number of working groups, each comprising 3-4 people from across the community.
Possible working groups could include
- Strategy and resourcing
- Science (core) code management (trunk updates and code consolidation, biogeophysics and biogeochemistry)
- CABLE offline (primarily I/O issues so could be the current I/O working group)
- CABLE coupled (primarily interface/coupling issues for ACCESS but could also include LIS/WRF, CCAM)
- Benchmarking (development of tools/test cases and/or assessment of a code improvement against the agreed benchmarks)
The working groups could initiate tasks relevant to their groups but the committee could also pass tickets to different working groups for action. Thus a committee agenda might include
- ticket review: resolve or pass to relevant working group
- reports from each working group, including progress on allocated tickets - some tickets may need to pass through more than one working group e.g. code management and benchmarking
- Community and communication activities (video conferences, workshops etc)
One aim of this restructure would be to resolve tickets more quickly than is currently being achieved.
Should the coordinator be one of the working group leads or not?
Should the coordinator be part of the strategy working group?
Does the coordinator need to be the person who leads communication activities e.g. the email list and meetings?
Have we got enough people who are willing to put time into being part of a working group?
What process would we use to appoint people to working groups and, as leads, to the committee?
Would it become the responsibility of each working group lead to find their own working group members?
Should we ask for annual involvement rather than an open-ended commitment?
Is this too large a departure from current practice?
General agreement that a restructure based around working groups was worth pursuing. Email to be sent to CABLE list by RL for comment/feedback and to gauge interest in being involved. Discussed who committee should report to. Suggested that a regular update to key people (those with resource allocation roles) would be sufficient. Noted that communication is important for getting resources recognised and time allocations formalised. Discussed pros and cons of having coordinator also lead a working group, a more neutral vs a more invested coordinator. Agreed it needed someone passionate about CABLE and thinking holistically. JK raised CABLE LIS/WRF versions and whether they were more aligned to CABLE offline or CABLE coupled working groups. Agreed needed 'CABLE coupled' working group to be broader than just 'CABLE ACCESS'. Noted that 'Core code management' WG would be focussed on the science code and needed to include biophysics and biogeochemistry. Discussed what we are trying to improve through a restructure and noted a faster through-put of tickets and less reliance on JS for all technical implementation (of trunk updates). RL to update CommitteeRestructure wiki page to reflect discussion.
*RL noted feedback received by email. Contributions from CC, AP, MdK, YPW, TZ, JK, BP, with EOI for coordinators position from VH and JS. Most feedback was mostly positive but noted the potential difficulty of finding enough people willing to contribute to a relatively large number of working groups. Need to have flexibility around working groups. Suggest having a committee member as contact point for each area and form working-groups as required. Initial contacts could be RL strategy/resourcing, VH science code, GA bench-marking, IH/JS CABLE coupling. Possibility of splitting coordinator role into science and technical and share between VH and JS. VH/JS/RL to meet and refine this idea. Next committee meeting to be relatively open, with email invite to potential new members of committee or those who could contribute to a working group. MdK, IH, PB, CC suggested. *