Change Review Board

Terms of Reference

The Change Review Board prioritizes tasks and prepares a Core Team development schedule, and plans, authorizes, and reviews the content of ESMF releases.

CRB members meet on a quarterly basis to review and revise development priorities, and prepare a development and release schedule for the Core Team. Proposals for new requirements or changes to existing requirements, and the concomitant development of new functionality, or changes to existing functionality, are communicated to the CRB from the JST via the ESMF support mailing list. The Board reviews all updates to requirements and prioritizes the implementation of new requests among the outstanding development tasks on the Core Team schedule. Prioritization takes into account the immediate needs of the agencies funding ESMF development. The release schedule prepared by the CRB specifies development tasks on a per-release basis for releases about a year into future. The CRB reviews releases for conformance to planned contents prior to release.

The CRB is populated with application developers representing agency and institutional stake holders in the ESMF project. A typical CRB member controls the scientific and technical development of a set of ESMF-compliant applications. The Core Team Manager and the ESMF Program Coordinator are ex-officio members of the CRB. The Core Team Manager advises the CRB on the capabilities of the Core Team and the scheduling of development activities. The ESMF Program Coordinator leads and mediates CRB meetings.

Members and Meetings

The CRB consists of lead developers who represent major Application Integration and Development Plug-In efforts, the Core Team Manager, and the Program Coordinator. Members are appointed by the Executive Board and serve renewable one-year terms. CRB discussions are mediated by the Program Coordinator. The CRB meets quarterly.

Charge and Reporting

• Review and authorize proposed changes to the reference implementation maintained by the Core Team.
• Update the development and release schedules.
• Review and approve the content of ESMF releases to assure that development tasks are completed prior to release.