Members of the LCG Project Execution Board and their Roles December 2003

The Project Execution Board (PEB) meets weekly to supervise the work of the project. Changes of scope require endorsement by the Software and Computing Committee (SC2). To change scope it will elaborate a proposal to be presented to the SC2 defining the requirements and the associated resources along with an outline work-plan. If required an RTAG will be used to generate requirements specifications, reporting back its conclusions to the PEB.

Each member of the PEB has a defined role (see below). The PEB reports to the Project Overview Board (POB). It provides quarterly progress and status reports to the SC2, and additional information as required. It responds to recommendations or other guidance from the SC2.

The Project Leader and the SC2 chair are appointed by the CERN Director General. The Project Leader appoints the Secretary, the Chief Technology Officer and the four Area Managers.

All members of the PEB use their knowledge and expertise to participate actively in the coordination and management of the project, including the specification of requirements, development and evolution of the work plan, setting of goals and milestones, and allocation of resources to the different activities. The board endeavours to work by consensus, but if this is not achieved the Project Leader will make decisions taking account of the advice of the Board.

Project Leader

• Chair the meetings of the board.
• Ensure that the board is kept aware of the important issues faced by the project.
• Taking advice from the PEB, ensure that decisions are taken in a transparent and timely manner to ensure smooth running of the project.
• Strive to attain consensus within the PEB for all major decisions.
• Identify potential or actual problem areas that are not being addressed and take corrective action.
• Maintain the overall plan of the project. This is delegated to the Project Planning Officer who will be invited as necessary to attend the PEB (the planning officer currently also acts as secretary to the PEB).
• Manage the allocation of resources under the control of the project, maintaining resource allocation information and preparing reports for the Computing Resource Review Board. This is delegated to the Project Resource Manager who will be invited as necessary to attend the PEB.
• Report to the POB on behalf of the PEB, and bring feedback and decisions back to the PEB.
• Report to the SC2 on behalf of the PEB, and bring feedback and decisions back to the PEB.

Secretary

• Prepare agendas for PEB meetings, coordinating with the other members of the PEB.
• Maintain the to-do list and actions list.
• Ensure regular exposure through the agenda of each of the activities of the project – operational areas and experiments.
• Prepare minutes of the PEB meetings, reporting decisions and agreements, in a form suitable for a wide distribution within the project.

Chief Technology Officer

• Maintain a coherent picture (architecture) of the systems side of the project (storage model - data management - grid functionality - service model - computing model).
• Ensure that the different areas are well aware of the wider technology landscape, including coordination of evaluation activities and practice experience.
• Where appropriate develop policy and strategy proposals for endorsement by the PEB.
• Look out for problems that are slipping into the cracks, or are not being addressed.
• Intervene to resolve problems with limited term activities (e.g. fabric management in 2002; middleware policy, storage access model in 2003).
• The CTO is in the PEB to ensure that he is aware of the problems and concerns of the other areas of the project, and to enable him to bring his concerns rapidly to the attention of the other members of the project management.

Area Managers

• There are four Area Managers, each with operational responsibility for a defined area of the project.
• Applications – provision of a development environment for applications software, development and support of common applications tools and libraries, common data management facilities and support for distributed analysis.
• CERN Fabric – provision of the physics computing service at CERN, including the physical infrastructure, data recording and storage, programme development service, clusters for data analysis, local and wide area networking.
• Middleware – provision of a base set of grid middleware for the LCG service, including integration of tools from different sources, testing, maintenance, and long-term support.
• Grid Deployment - establishing and managing the LHC Grid Service – including middleware, certification, security, operations, registration, authorisation, and accounting.
• Elaborate work plans within their areas to respond to the formal requirements of the project, with estimates of the resources needed.
• Negotiate the provision of the necessary resources, adjusting work plans as necessary.
• Propose milestones to enable the PEB and other committees to follow progress.
• Report on progress with the work plan, including a forward look and any actions taken to correct anticipated problems.
• Bring information of decisions, difficulties and other significant issues and concerns to the attention of the PEB. This includes regular reporting of decisions and agreements made by subsidiary committees.

Experiment Computing Coordinators

• Provide direct feedback from the experiments on the usage and take-up of the software and infrastructure deployed by the project.
• Bring the opinion of the final users of the project into the management and decision making process.
• They are assumed to speak authoritatively for the whole experiment, and therefore it is their duty to collect and mediate the opinion of the different components of the experiment they represent.
• They have a specific role in driving the specification and evolution of the formal requirements, through the RTAG process if required.
• Plan and manage the take-up by their experiment of the common tools and services of the project.

Chair of the Grid Deployment Board

The Grid Deployment Board (GDB) is the governing body of the collaboration of regional centres that deploy and operate the LHC Grid service, and the experiments that use it. The role of the GDB chair in the PEB includes the following.

• Convey the point of view of the regional centres into the project.
• Liaise between the PEB and the GDB, bringing information and decisions from the GDB to the attention of the PEB, and vice versa.
• Provide direct feedback from the regional centres on the usage and take-up of the software and infrastructure deployed by the project, bringing this to bear on the management and decision making process in the PEB.
• Plan and coordinate the allocation and delivery of resources by regional centres to the LCG service to fulfil the experiments’ requirements.

Chair of the SC2

• The chair of the SC2 is invited to attend PEB meetings to ensure good communication between the two committees.
• Coordinate the meetings between the LHCC referees and the project.

EGEE Technical Director

• Ensure coherence between the two projects for technical matters, in particular:
• Ensure the coherence between LCG and EGEE projects' milestones and deliverables.
• Ensure that the wider scope of the applications and activities of EGEE and LCG priorities do not lead to divergences.
• Identify potential slippages, omissions or clashes and react rapidly to ensure the smooth coexistence of the two projects.
• Report to the EGEE management bodies on the technical progress and status of LCG