CNCF Working Groups: Structure, Purpose, and Participation#

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) organizes collaborative technical work through several types of groups. While "working group" is not a primary governance term in CNCF as of 2025, the foundation uses Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs), Initiatives, Subprojects, and Technical Community Groups (TCGs) to structure ongoing and short-term efforts. These groups are open to contributors and play a central role in advancing cloud native technologies.

CNCF Technical Group Structures#

Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs) are long-lived bodies aligned with major industry problem domains or common needs across CNCF projects. TAGs provide technical expertise, evaluate projects, and produce best practices and guidance for the ecosystem. Each TAG has a defined charter, leadership (Chairs and Tech Leads), and regular meetings. Current TAGs include:

• TAG Developer Experience: Focuses on databases, microservices, streaming, messaging, API management, developer frameworks, and developer experience.
• TAG Infrastructure: Covers data, storage, networking, DNS, compute, service mesh, infrastructure-as-code, edge, sovereignty, and load balancing.
• TAG Operational Resilience: Addresses observability, management, business continuity, resource optimization, cost efficiency, energy, performance, troubleshooting, reliability, Day 2 operations, chaos engineering.
• TAG Security and Compliance: Works on security hygiene, policy-as-code, compliance, auditing, threat modeling, secure software supply chain, risk management.
• TAG Workloads Foundation: Encompasses containers, OS, runtime, virtual machines, serverless, WebAssembly, batch, scheduler, orchestrator, deployment, dynamic scaling, CI/CD.

Each TAG maintains a Slack channel and regular meeting schedule. For example, meetings for TAG Developer Experience begin the week of June 9, 2025 (meeting info), and the Slack channel is #tag-developer-experience (source).

Subprojects are ongoing efforts within TAGs or directly under the TOC, such as contributor strategy, mentoring, or project reviews. Subprojects have their own leads and charters.

Initiatives are lightweight, time-bound groups focused on producing specific deliverables, such as white papers, reports, or technical frameworks. Initiatives are proposed by community members or TAGs and overseen by TAG or TOC leadership. Examples include the Artificial Intelligence Initiative and the Project Capabilities Badging Framework (source).

Technical Community Groups (TCGs) are informal, topic-focused discussion groups that serve as rallying points for knowledge sharing and coordination. TCGs do not have formal leadership and are outside the direct TOC structure (source).

What CNCF Working Groups Do#

CNCF technical groups drive the technical direction of the cloud native ecosystem. Their activities include:

• Producing best practices, technical guidance, and reference architectures.
• Evaluating and reviewing CNCF projects for technical fit and maturity.
• Running initiatives to address focused problems or produce specific outputs (e.g., supply chain insights, disaster recovery whitepapers).
• Facilitating cross-project collaboration and knowledge sharing.
• Organizing public meetings, deep-dive sessions at events like KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, and maintaining open communication channels.

For example, the Data Protection Working Group (DPWG) focuses on data availability and preservation for Kubernetes, including backup, restore, remote replication, and orchestration. The DPWG has published white papers, contributed to Kubernetes enhancements like Changed Block Tracking (CBT) and Volume Group Snapshots, and organizes sessions at major CNCF events (source).

How to Get Involved#

Participation in CNCF technical groups is open to anyone interested in cloud native technologies. To get involved:

1. Find a Group: Review the list of TAGs, Initiatives, Subprojects, and TCGs on the CNCF community portal or contributor site.
2. Join Meetings: All meetings are public. Schedules are posted on the CNCF community portal and group pages. For example, TAG meetings are listed on the Linux Foundation Zoom platform.
3. Participate in Discussions: Join relevant Slack channels (see above), mailing lists, and GitHub repositories. Introduce yourself and join ongoing conversations.
4. Contribute to Initiatives: Help deliver white papers, reports, or other community resources. Look for "good first issue" labels in related repositories.
5. Nominate for Leadership: Self-nominate or nominate others for leadership positions during open nomination periods. Leadership roles include TAG Chair, Tech Lead, Subproject Lead, and TCG Organizer (source).
6. Propose New Initiatives: Open a new Initiative request issue in the TOC GitHub repository. Any person or group may apply; oversight is provided by TOC or TAG leadership (source).
7. Follow the Code of Conduct: All participants must adhere to the CNCF Code of Conduct.

Example: Joining the Data Protection Working Group#

• Review the DPWG README.
• Attend sessions at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon or join meetings listed in the README.
• Participate in discussions on GitHub and Slack.
• Contribute to ongoing projects, such as white papers or Kubernetes enhancements (source).

Benefits of Participation#

Contributors to CNCF technical groups gain opportunities to:

• Influence the technical direction of cloud native projects.
• Collaborate with industry experts and peers.
• Develop and share best practices and technical guidance.
• Build professional networks and gain recognition in the community.
• Learn from and contribute to cutting-edge cloud native technologies.

Authoritative Resources#

• CNCF Community Portal
• CNCF Contributor Site: Governance
• CNCF TOC GitHub Repository
• CNCF Code of Conduct
• CNCF Slack Workspace
• DPWG README

For questions, use the CNCF TOC mailing list, join the TOC Slack channel, or file issues in the TOC GitHub repository (source).