Improve understanding the Maturity Levels in CNCF

[TheFoxAtWork]

The TOC, End User TAB, and community members have been discussing the lack of clarity in understanding what each of the maturity levels of our Matriculation process mean both for our projects, contributors, and adopters of these projects. While these levels typically align with stages of the SDLC at a very high level, not all projects reach maturity in the same fashion for all adopters and many adopters do not understand the level of diligence applied for a given level resulting in confusion, increased queries for understanding the project's maturity and stability, as well as other elements that may delay or misconstrue a project's true state.

This issue is to capture the action from yesterday's TOC call (#1491) I had mentioned and to provide the community an opportunity to assist in completing this.

Some resources from past presentations and discussions the maturity levels:

• TOC keynotes at Kubecons
• Notes from Take it on presentation on Chop Wood Carry Water

These levels provide other projects and potential adopters with a basic understand of how mature the project is.

Sandbox: experiments or other very early projects that can add value and build the ingredients of a successful incubation level project

Early but not too early, experimental but with potential impact and value in the ecosystem. These projects are getting underway and may experience a lot of change, such as frequency in release, governance, breaking changes, new APIs, complete redesigns, etc. These projects are reviewed by our community and TOC members to understand how they fit in cloud native, if they make sense, will they succeed or are they worth the gamble.

Incubation: projects transitioning from innovation to early adoption, confident in the core functionality and capability while building maturity and stability as the foundation for a resilient and responsive graduated project

These projects have not quite crossed the chasm, but are standing on the edge of it looking for how to cross. They’ve begun to slow in the amount of change they experience, and are becoming more stable. This is also the first stage where they’re adoption is evaluated.

Graduation: projects that continually demonstrate highly mature, evolved practices, reaching widespread adoption for their market area while providing a high degree of confidence in the guarantees of the project’s stability, performance, security, and engagement

These projects crossed the chasm. They are fairly robust and mature, what we would say as Production Ready. When Incubating projects are ready to graduate, they get a second adoption evaluation.

• sandbox.cncf.io provides some information on sandbox level
• Current information in the process readme is very short: https://github.com/cncf/toc/tree/main/process#introduction

please add others for reference to who ever takes up this work!

[saiyam1814]

I can take this up!
Just to understand it correctly, https://github.com/cncf/toc/tree/main/process#introduction - this is what we need to improve right? I will start working on it and create a draft PR soon.

[monadic]

fwiw, the OG concept for incubation was that the project could be used in production; and then graduation was more focussed on sustainability.

…

On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 6:20 AM Saiyam Pathak ***@***.***> wrote: I can take this up! Just to understand it correctly, https://github.com/cncf/toc/tree/main/process#introduction - this is what we need to improve right? I will start working on it and create a draft PR soon. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1518 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAINXQIB6AAV7J6CQGWEI32J5RCJAVCNFSM6AAAAABU2NMGVKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDKOBRHA3DIMRZGM> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[TheFoxAtWork]

Thanks @monadic !

[TheFoxAtWork]

@saiyam1814 yes