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Merge Forward

Merge Forward Roles Responsibilities

Summary: Catherine Paganini elaborates on the roles and responsibilities within the Merge Forward group, highlighting the critical functions of Group Chairs, Leads, Project Leads, and Community Members. Chairs and Leads are tasked with ensuring effective governance and meeting the group's operational needs, while Project Leads manage specific projects, adhering to defined deliverables and responsibilities. Community members contribute by participating in meetings, discussions, and recruitment efforts. The distinction between Community Groups and Working Groups is also drawn, emphasizing the transition based on group maturity and consistency.
AI Summary

Merge Forward includes several roles that are critical to the group's success. The group will have many members, all serving in varying capacities, including:

  1. Group Chairs

  2. Group Leads

  3. Project Leads

  4. Community Members

Responsibilities of Chairs, Leads, Project Leads, Active Members

Chairs, Leads, Project Leads, or Members fulfilling specific roles in Merge Forward (Members) are responsible for understanding and abiding by the governance and policies defined in this group. Their primary role is to contribute expertise to the group.

Maintaining active members

  • Members SHOULD remain active and responsive in their roles.

  • Members taking an extended leave of 1 or more months SHOULD coordinate with other members to ensure the role is adequately staffed during the leave.

  • Members going on leave for 1-3 months MAY work with other members to identify a temporary replacement.

  • Members of a role SHOULD remove any other members that have not communicated a leave of absence and either cannot be reached for more than 1 month or are not fulfilling their responsibilities for more than 1 month.  

Managing membership

  • Membership disagreements may be escalated to the Chairs. Disagreements among the Chairs may be escalated to a Merge Forward Oversight Committee.

  • Members MAY decide to step down at any time and optionally propose a replacement.

Merge Forward Community Groups vs Working Groups

The Merge Forward Working Group (WG) is a natural evolution of a Community Group (CG). A CG becomes a WG when it demonstrates consistency and maturity, specifically by having a regular meeting schedule, a core group of at least five regular contributors, and two or more official documents. While a CG is led by Group Leads, a WG is chaired by Chairs.

Role of Group Leads and Chairs  

  • The primary role of Chairs and Leads is to ensure effective operations and governance of the group.   

  • The Chairs and Leads are responsible for ensuring that group meetings are planned, the Community Page is always up-to-date, projects remain active, and the community engaged.

  • Chairs and Leads ensure all perspectives are taken into account by encouraging everyone to participate in a meaningful way.

  • Chairs and Leads help foster a safe space for anyone to voice their opinion. 

  • Chairs and Leads must ensure collaboration is accessible to anyone who wants to participate.

Role of Project Leads

Project Leads lead specific MF-wide projects or projects within a CW/WG. Deliverables have been defined in the project description or agreed upon during a meeting. Project Leads are nominated and approved by the following process:

  1. Project Lead actively participates in the group, initiates the proposal or volunteers to take on a project that has been prioritized by the group.

  2. A Chair or Lead nominates a candidate or requests the community to nominate in a Slack thread.

  3. The nomination is communicated on Slack and at the following monthly meeting.

  4. The “Discussion” post is updated with the assignment of the project lead as "assignee" alongside any project facilitators.

Project Leads can have one or more Co-Leads, but we recommend having only one person as the main Project Lead.

Duties of a Project Lead

Project leads are responsible for the following:

  • Adhering to the project process,

  • Proposing and refining the project scope, goal, and schedule,

  • Ensure smooth day-to-day operations of the project,

  • Ensure progress and status reports are communicated during meetings,

  • Resolving conflict within the project and escalating to leadership when required,

  • Outreach and recruitment for the project,

Community Members

Anyone who joins MF and actively participates is considered a community member. Community members play a key role in MF. This is how they typically contribute:

  • Regularly attend meetings and offer ad hoc support.

  • Check into the #merge-forward Slack channel to:

    • Participate in Slack discussions (a lot of the ongoing projects will be discussed there, and we encourage you to follow the conversation and actively participate),

    • Help amplify our messages by sharing social media posts within your network.

  • Help spread the MF message and recruit new members.


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Catherine Paganini
2 days, 16 hours ago