enhancement_template.md

title	authors	reviewers	approvers	creation-date	last-updated	status	see-also	replaces	superseded-by
neat-enhancement-idea	@janedoe	TBD @alicedoe	TBD @oscardoe	yyyy-mm-dd	yyyy-mm-dd	provisional|implementable|implemented|deferred|rejected|withdrawn|replaced|informational	/enhancements/this-other-neat-thing.md	/enhancements/that-less-than-great-idea.md	/enhancements/our-past-effort.md

Start by filling out this header template with metadata for this enhancement.

• reviewers: This can be anyone that has an interest in this work.

• approvers: All enhancements must be approved, but the appropriate people to approve a given enhancement depends on its scope. If an enhancement is limited in scope to a given team or component, then a peer or lead on that team or pillar is an appropriate approver. If an enhancement captures something more broad in scope, then a member of the OpenShift architects team or someone they delegate would be appropriate. Examples would be something that changes the definition of OpenShift in some way, adds a new required dependency, or changes the way customers are supported. Use your best judgement to determine the level of approval needed. If you’re not sure, just leave it blank and ask for input during review.

Neat Enhancement Idea

This is the title of the enhancement. Keep it simple and descriptive. A good title can help communicate what the enhancement is and should be considered as part of any review.

The YAML title should be lowercased and spaces/punctuation should be replaced with -.

To get started with this template:

1. Pick a domain. Find the appropriate domain to discuss your enhancement.
2. Make a copy of this template. Copy this template into the directory for the domain.
3. Fill out the "overview" sections. This includes the Summary and Motivation sections. These should be easy and explain why the community should desire this enhancement.
4. Create a PR. Assign it to folks with expertise in that domain to help sponsor the process.
5. Merge at each milestone. Merge when the design is able to transition to a new status (provisional, implementable, implemented, etc.). View anything marked as provisional as an idea worth exploring in the future, but not accepted as ready to execute. Anything marked as implementable should clearly communicate how an enhancement is coded up and delivered. If an enhancement describes a new deployment topology or platform, include a logical description for the deployment, and how it handles the unique aspects of the platform. Aim for single topic PRs to keep discussions focused. If you disagree with what is already in a document, open a new PR with suggested changes.

The Metadata section above is intended to support the creation of tooling around the enhancement process.

Release Signoff Checklist

• Enhancement is implementable
• Design details are appropriately documented from clear requirements
• Test plan is defined
• Operational readiness criteria is defined
• Graduation criteria for dev preview, tech preview, GA
• User-facing documentation is created in openshift-docs

Summary

The Summary section is incredibly important for producing high quality user-focused documentation such as release notes or a development roadmap. It should be possible to collect this information before implementation begins in order to avoid requiring implementors to split their attention between writing release notes and implementing the feature itself.

A good summary is probably at least a paragraph in length.

Motivation

This section is for explicitly listing the motivation, goals and non-goals of this proposal. Describe why the change is important and the benefits to users.

Goals

List the specific goals of the proposal. How will we know that this has succeeded?

Non-Goals

What is out of scope for this proposal? Listing non-goals helps to focus discussion and make progress.

Proposal

This is where we get down to the nitty gritty of what the proposal actually is.

User Stories

Detail the things that people will be able to do if this is implemented. Include as much detail as possible so that people can understand the "how" of the system. The goal here is to make this feel real for users without getting bogged down.

Include a story on how this proposal will be operationalized: lifecycled, monitored and remediated at scale.

Implementation Details/Notes/Constraints [optional]

What are the caveats to the implementation? What are some important details that didn't come across above. Go in to as much detail as necessary here. This might be a good place to talk about core concepts and how they relate.

Risks and Mitigations

What are the risks of this proposal and how do we mitigate. Think broadly. For example, consider both security and how this will impact the larger OKD ecosystem.

How will security be reviewed and by whom? How will UX be reviewed and by whom?

Consider including folks that also work outside your immediate sub-project.

Design Details

Open Questions [optional]

This is where to call out areas of the design that require closure before deciding to implement the design. For instance,

1. This requires exposing previously private resources which contain sensitive information. Can we do this?

Test Plan

Note: Section not required until targeted at a release.

Consider the following in developing a test plan for this enhancement:

• Will there be e2e and integration tests, in addition to unit tests?
• How will it be tested in isolation vs with other components?
• What additional testing is necessary to support managed OpenShift service-based offerings?

No need to outline all of the test cases, just the general strategy. Anything that would count as tricky in the implementation and anything particularly challenging to test should be called out.

All code is expected to have adequate tests (eventually with coverage expectations).

Graduation Criteria

Note: Section not required until targeted at a release.

Define graduation milestones.

These may be defined in terms of API maturity, or as something else. Initial proposal should keep this high-level with a focus on what signals will be looked at to determine graduation.

Consider the following in developing the graduation criteria for this enhancement:

• Maturity levels
  • alpha, beta, stable in upstream Kubernetes
  • Dev Preview, Tech Preview, GA in OpenShift
• Deprecation policy

Clearly define what graduation means by either linking to the API doc definition, or by redefining what graduation means.

In general, we try to use the same stages (alpha, beta, GA), regardless how the functionality is accessed.

Examples: These are generalized examples to consider, in addition to the aforementioned maturity levels.

Dev Preview -> Tech Preview

• Ability to utilize the enhancement end to end
• End user documentation, relative API stability
• Sufficient test coverage
• Gather feedback from users rather than just developers
• Enumerate service level indicators (SLIs), expose SLIs as metrics
• Write symptoms-based alerts for the component(s)

Tech Preview -> GA

• More testing (upgrade, downgrade, scale)
• Sufficient time for feedback
• Available by default
• Backhaul SLI telemetry
• Document SLOs for the component
• Conduct load testing

For non-optional features moving to GA, the graduation criteria must include end to end tests.

Removing a deprecated feature

• Announce deprecation and support policy of the existing feature
• Deprecate the feature

Upgrade / Downgrade Strategy

If applicable, how will the component be upgraded and downgraded? Make sure this is in the test plan.

Consider the following in developing an upgrade/downgrade strategy for this enhancement:

• What changes (in invocations, configurations, API use, etc.) is an existing cluster required to make on upgrade in order to keep previous behavior?
• What changes (in invocations, configurations, API use, etc.) is an existing cluster required to make on upgrade in order to make use of the enhancement?

Upgrade expectations:

• Each component should remain available for user requests and workloads during upgrades. Ensure the components leverage best practices in handling voluntary disruption. Any exception to this should be identified and discussed here.
• Micro version upgrades - users should be able to skip forward versions within a minor release stream without being required to pass through intermediate versions - i.e. x.y.N->x.y.N+2 should work without requiring x.y.N->x.y.N+1 as an intermediate step.
• Minor version upgrades - you only need to support x.N->x.N+1 upgrade steps. So, for example, it is acceptable to require a user running 4.3 to upgrade to 4.5 with a 4.3->4.4 step followed by a 4.4->4.5 step.
• While an upgrade is in progress, new component versions should continue to operate correctly in concert with older component versions (aka "version skew"). For example, if a node is down, and an operator is rolling out a daemonset, the old and new daemonset pods must continue to work correctly even while the cluster remains in this partially upgraded state for some time.

Downgrade expectations:

• If an N->N+1 upgrade fails mid-way through, or if the N+1 cluster is misbehaving, it should be possible for the user to rollback to N. It is acceptable to require some documented manual steps in order to fully restore the downgraded cluster to its previous state. Examples of acceptable steps include:
  • Deleting any CVO-managed resources added by the new version. The CVO does not currently delete resources that no longer exist in the target version.

Version Skew Strategy

How will the component handle version skew with other components? What are the guarantees? Make sure this is in the test plan.

Consider the following in developing a version skew strategy for this enhancement:

• During an upgrade, we will always have skew among components, how will this impact your work?
• Does this enhancement involve coordinating behavior in the control plane and in the kubelet? How does an n-2 kubelet without this feature available behave when this feature is used?
• Will any other components on the node change? For example, changes to CSI, CRI or CNI may require updating that component before the kubelet.

Implementation History

Major milestones in the life cycle of a proposal should be tracked in Implementation History.

Drawbacks

The idea is to find the best form of an argument why this enhancement should not be implemented.

Alternatives

Similar to the Drawbacks section the Alternatives section is used to highlight and record other possible approaches to delivering the value proposed by an enhancement.

Infrastructure Needed [optional]

Use this section if you need things from the project. Examples include a new subproject, repos requested, github details, and/or testing infrastructure.

Listing these here allows the community to get the process for these resources started right away.