FAB Project Board Agenda Minutes October 2021

Fab Project Board- 4th October 2021

Attendees:

• Glenn Greed
• Richard Gilham
• Steve Mullerworth
• Keir Bovis
• Matt Shin

Actions From Last Project Board

A1 – Fab team to engage with Stuart and Victoria in their GITHUB analysis. CLOSE

A2 – SW to report back on progress with using a VirtualBox with ubuntu to perform more interactive testing. CLOSE

• ACTION RG to capture requirement to replicate GitHub Actions environment for interactive usage in the future.

A3 – RG to add a high-level statement of the project’s scope and circulate it for review to GG and DB. CLOSE

• ACTION RG to adjust the scope to mention i) demonstration of Fab using JULES, UM, LFRic; ii) state NG-DA and JEDI are out of scope
• ACTION SM to review existing requirements and communicate and new anticipated ones

A4 – SW to forward the latest UML diagram to Richard Hattersley for review, and check whether class diagrams meet the requirements. CLOSE

• This was done and no major concerns were voiced. However these are probably now out of date.
• Agreed that these should be updated later on, rather than an immediate focus.

A5 –RG to discuss with DB how best to communicate with partners to seek expressions of interest for collaboration. CLOSE

• Discussion agreed that now is not the time to push Fab with partners. However, later on the NGMS Champions group would be a good route.
• ACTION RG Add milestone to advertise Fab, eg via a Seminar, once the general capability has been proven.

Present Project Phase

Phase 4 of the project is still technically live. The main goals from the phase 4 plan have seen some progress:

• Building JULES largely works with some minor tweaks needed, eg to pick up a missing pattern
• Fortran-C capability is on Master, the main thing needed for the UM

It is proposed that we close phase 4 to make a clean break for the fresh start promised by the arrival of contractors.

Next Project Phase Main Topic

In October, 2 contractors will be starting with us- David Brown on 11th October, and Byron Blay on 18th October (date TBC). This is a new departure for us, and is a calculated risk to learn about how to work with external resource. Thanks to Keir Bovis and Phil Gill for helping with recruitment.

It is expected that the first couple of weeks will involve corporate onboarding, and familiarisation with Fab and all the supporting things that implies. Line management will be overseen by Keir Bovis, and Fab task management by Richard Gilham.

The plan is for David and Byron to push Fab forward to demonstrate a Minimum Viable Product for UM and LFRic (excluding, eg, incremental builds). This will require both development of Fab's functionality and applying it to the JULES, UM and LFRic codebases. Note that JULES and UM bring in successive portions of the code compiled by LFRic, and provide many co-benefits in terms of quality and sustainability.

It is proposed that the following milestones are set up with the NGMS Programme, largely representing a retiming of existing ones:

• Mar-22 Fab UM build demonstrator
• Jun-22 Fab LFRic build demonstrator

Later phases would look at enhancing Fab such that it may take over from existing solutions. the work required would be based on an assessment of the demonstrators. Implementation by LFRic and/or UM would require discussion with the relevant projects.

Roles and ways of working

David and Byron are experienced developers and will likely have views about how they would like to work. We must respect this and allow them to self-organise for efficiency. Both lean towards Agile in their approach.

At the outset, the existing Fab project team will need to take time to get them up to speed both in terms of what has been done and what development work is anticipated to meet/exceed the two milestones. Throughout, it is expected that the project team will act in this consultant role.

Initially, we will take a cautious approach to protecting Master. One of the existing project team will review Pull Requests and Met Office staff have oversight of the quality processes. As we build confidence in each other, we will consider relaxing this. However, we expect good communication to be maintained to ensure Met Office team members retain good knowledge of Fab.

In terms of communication, we will leverage existing comms routes. We will also discuss the possibility of daily/weekly standups, depending on what works for all.

The Project Board should be updated approximately monthly on progress so that any adjustments can be made.

Notes from discussion:

• Contractors presently have funding to the end of FY 21/22. However, further funding may be available if needed.

• The platforms used for the planned milestones are not specified but will be one of the current Met Office systems, likely SPICE.

• ACTION RG Add a milestone at end Nov-21 for contractors to report back their tactical work plan to the project board

Standing Items

Staff and Resourcing

Long-standing resourcing challenge remains with Fab being out-prioritised. Contractor resource due this month.

Welfare

No concerns at present. Keir Bovis will line manage our contractors and ensure the basics are taken care of.

Review Risk/Issue Log

The risk and issue log has had an incremental refresh.

• Staffing the dominating issue, but with a major mitigation in the form of contractor imminent.
• Also a minor niggle about GitHub actions changing under us. Possibly an illustrative point for NGMS more generally.

Pathway to Green

Appointment of contractors offers a good opportunity to ensure Fab is healthy.

Review Stakeholders

At present, the stakeholder analysis is probably fit for purpose because it keeps us focused on our main goal. Once fab is on the way to being proven, then reaching out further would be desirable.

Change Management Issues

Once the plan has been agreed, we should determine if it needs to pass through the formal NGMS change management process. A further iteration may be needed later if our estimate of progress through using the contractors is too optimistic.

AOB

Project Board membership- Doug and Matt replacements?

• Matt Shin has kindly offered to remain on the Project Board.
• The Partnerships rep will be dropped for now, in alignment with above discussion

Next Meeting

Date TBC, aiming for early December.

Actions for next Project Board

• A6 RG to capture requirement to replicate GitHub Actions environment for interactive usage in the future.
  • RG- will likely leave this as an open action for now
• A7 RG to adjust the scope to mention i) demonstration of Fab using JULES, UM, LFRic; ii) state NG-DA and JEDI are out of scope
  • RG- DONE
• A8 SM to review existing requirements and communicate and new anticipated ones
• A9 RG Add milestone to advertise Fab, eg via a Seminar, once the general capability has been proven.
  • RG- DONE at top of project plan page
• A10 RG Add a milestone at end Nov-21 for contractors to report back their tactical work plan to the project board
  • RG- DONE added to Phase 5