Proposal for Evolution at Scale (EvoaS) Working Group formation

[mgasca]

Evolution at Scale

Driving the adoption of technologies, patterns and practices with the goal of simplifying how developers can automate mass changes to a large number of code repositories, effectively evolving them all simultaneously.

Vision

We envision a future where software complexity is continuously and seamlessly managed by intelligent automation; empowering developers to remain focused on delivering new business value. In this world, open source maintainers, security research organizations, product and service vendors and financial institutions collaborate to realize this. Well tested and re-usable building blocks of automation are produced by subject matter experts that can implement security remediations, automate upgrades handling breaking changes, reduce technical debt and more. Above that are systems that can identify where to apply the automation and then distribute the work across source code repositories, making commits and submitting them for review. As a result, system evolution becomes proactive, efficient for all and nearly effortless for some ensuring secure, up-to-date, correct and high performing software everywhere.

Mission

The Evolution at Scale Working group is a forum for discussion,coordination and collaboration on execution of initiatives and projects. Through education, driving engagement and collaborative innovation .we will enable financial organizations to continuously evolve their systems while at the same time empowering them to focus on delivering what they care about The group is open to all interested parties, and we welcome contributions from all members of the community.

Why Now?

• Modern software is built on top of a complex web of open-source dependencies and libraries. To mitigate the risk from bad actors, there is a pressing need to secure the software supply chain.

• There is a need to resolve the same problem across multiple large code bases. As these requirements increase, we need to take a different approach to solve this problem. A new way of thinking supported by modern tools is needed.

• Improving developer productivity is at the top of everyone’s mind to support more business enablement initiatives.

Potential Objectives

Our first objective will be to define a further set of forward looking looking objectives aligned with our mission. The details of this will be defined by the members of the working group itself. Some of the objectives that we have considered thus far include the following.

Compare tools that allow developers to evolve and modify code repositories at scale

There are many solutions on the market that attempt to solve the problem of upgrading at scale, both open source and offered by various vendors. One of the aims of our working group is to provide an objective comparison of these solutions, and to provide guidance on which solutions are best suited for solving which problems.

Share use cases, scenarios and success stories

To supplement the tool comparison, the working group will be a forum for members and collaborators to share their use cases for needing to perform evolutions at scale across multiple code repositories. Members will also share their success stories to provide guidance and inspiration for others.

The working group will also present whitepapers on how processes can be modified to support an evolution at scale first model.

Share recipes, scripts and tooling to support evolve at scale

The working group will create a forum to contribution solutions to common problems in the industry, allowing members to benefit from the expertise of their peers. Contributions can include, but are not limited to, recipes and scripting for existing tools, as well enhancements to open-source solutions.

Advocacy

Raise awareness of the benefits and practicalities of Evolution at Scale within the wider software development community. By engaging more professionals and organizations with this innovative approach to software design and architecture, we aim to advance the entire industry.

Operating Model

Working Group Lead Maintainers

At inception the working group will be lead by

Name	Email Address	FINOS Member	GitHub Profile
Miguel Gasca	[email protected]	Morgan Stanley	@mgasca
Khalid Elsawaf	[email protected]	Morgan Stanley	@masterkhal

The Working group extends an open invitation to anyone interested in helping to define how large-scale evolution can be done in an automated fashion going forward.

Meetings

Meetings of the working group are held biweekly on Wednesdays at noon Eastern / 17:00 UK, and are open to anyone who would like to participate. We will follow the standard used in DevOps Automation SIG where every meeting and it's agenda will be announced, documented and tracked via GitHub issues using a standard template. We will meet on zoom using the standard DevOps Automation SIG details, which will be posted on every meeting issue posted.

Current State

Initial introduction to DevOps Automation SIG by @mgasca.
2024-10-17

Presentation of Evolution at Scale as a proposal to the FINOS Technical Oversight Committee by @rocketstack-matt. Also present in support were @psmulovics, @masterkhal, @mgasca
2025-01-22

Issue proposing Working Group be started under the DevOps Automation SIG submitted.
2025-02-17

@masterkhal, @mgasca present proposal in DevOps Automation SIG meeting for consideration. If proposal is accepted then the first EvoaS Meeting will occur on Zoom, Wednesday the 26th February at noon Eastern / 17:00 UK.
2025-02-20

[masterkhal]

We hope the FINOS community will accept our proposal. We strongly believe that your Evolution at Scale working group can help drive significant improvements to developer productivity and help the greater community improve their overall ability to secure the software supply chain and help mitigate cyber security risk. Great write up @mgasca !

[ashukla13]

Note that starting a working group for this topic as part of the DevOps SIG was discussed at the Jan 22 FINOS ToC meeting and the discussion was in favor of doing this, with a clear agenda, which is now outlined by @masterkhal and @mgasca in this issue

[rocketstack-matt]

To do:

• Add meetings to FINOS calendar
• Email DevOps-Automation + Community mailing list advertising the WG
• Add WG to SIG docs