Leadership & Organisational Structure

This document presents some preliminary proposals on how the CellML Project should be lead and managed, with respect to decisions affecting resources in which the community has a stake.

Leadership

The decision making apparatus of the CellML Project will comprise two tiers: a steering group with the mandate and authority to make binding decisions on how the project is run, or to delegate this authority, and an arbitrary number of ad hoc working groups which are composed of individuals with interest and expertise in the relevant area.

The CellML Steering Group will consist of five senior members of the CellML Project. The members of this group will be selected at the CellML Annual General Meeting. Members of the community who can not be present at this meeting may delegate a representative to communicate their position on these matters. It will be the responsibility of the CellML Steering Group to ensure the consistency and coherency of the CellML Project. The Steering Group should be representative of the key groups within the CellML community: those responsibile for specification development, software developers, modellers and curators. With respect to the modelling representative, it is important that this person is primarily concerned with CellML as a means to an end, as opposed to the use of CellML in and of itself.

Working groups undertake the primary development work within the project.

Decision making process

The consensus of the community will be the driver of decisions made within the project, and a community consultation process will be followed in all matters.

The following process will be followed by the CellML Project and its constituent members when making significant decisions regarding the future of the CellML Project and Community.

• A representative of a working group will present a proposal to the community via the cellml-discussion mailing list and the CellML tracker.
• After a proposal has been available for discussion for a sufficient period of time (there being no new aspects put forward,) the proposer will call for the proposal to be closed.
• The procedure for closing a proposal involves notification to the CellML community by posting on the relevant tracker item and email to the cellml-discussion mailing list, that final discussions must be drawn to a close within a stated period of time (typically 1 or 2 weeks.)
• After this period the proposal is considered by a CellML Steering Group for acceptance, rejection, or deferral. The action taken will be decided by a vote requiring a threshold of 4 votes out of 5. These votes will be recorded publically in the CellML Tracker. Indeterminate votes will be resolved after a set period of time (initially 2 weeks, but flexible according to the situation,) to 'no objection by default.'
• If a member of the Steering Group is persistently unavailable to consider and vote on proposals, steps should be taken to elect a member who will be.
• If there is a clear community consensus on how the proposal should be dealt with (rejected or accepted,) the panel will usually accept the community consensus view. If the Steering Group is unable to reach a decision, the proposal will be forwarded for final consideration by the leader of the CellML project, who is currently Poul Nielsen. The project leader is able to exercise a casting vote, or recommend that the matter undergo further consideration.