Extract from the LCG TDR:
Concerning its main technical directions, the Collaboration is governed by the Collaboration Board (CB). The CB is composed of a representative of each Institution or federation of Institutions that is a Member of the Collaboration, the LCG Project Leader and the Spokespersons of each LHC Experiment, with voting rights; and the CERN Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), and CERN/IT and CERN/PH Department Heads, as ex-officio members without voting rights, as well as a Scientific Secretary. The CB elects the Chairperson of the CB from among its Members. The CB meets annually and at other times as required.
A standing committee of the CB, the Overview Board (OB), has the role of overseeing the functioning of the Collaboration. It also acts as a clearing-house for conflicts that may arise within the Collaboration. The OB is chaired by the CERN CSO. Its other members include one person appointed by the agency/agencies that funds/fund each of the Tier-1 centres, the Spokespersons of the LHC Experiments, the LCG Project Leader, the CERN/IT and CERN/PH Department Heads, and a Scientific Secretary. It meets about four times per year.
Both the CB and the OB may co-opt additional non-voting members as they deem necessary. The non-voting members complement the regular members by advising on, for example, matters concerning the environment in which the Collaboration operates or specialist aspects within their areas of expertise.
The work of the Collaboration is organized and managed as the LHC Computing Grid Project. The Management Board (MB) supervises the work of the Project. It is chaired by the LCG Project Leader and reports to the OB. The MB organizes the work of the Project as a set of formal activities. It maintains the overall programme of work and all other planning data necessary to ensure the smooth execution of the work of the Project. It provides quarterly progress and status reports to the OB. The MB endeavours to work by consensus but, if this is not achieved, the LCG Project Leader shall make decisions taking into account the advice of the Board. The MB membership includes the LCG Project Leader, the Technical Heads of the Tier-0 and Tier-1 centres, the leaders of the major activities managed by the Board, the Computing Co-ordinator of each LHC Experiment, the Chair of the Grid Deployment Board (GDB), a Scientific Secretary and other members as decided from time to time by the Board.
The Grid Deployment Board (GDB) is the forum within the Project where the computing managements of the experiments and the regional computing centres discuss and take, or prepare, the decisions necessary for planning, deploying, and operating the LHC Computing Grid. Its membership includes: as voting members — one person from each country with a regional computing centre providing resources to an LHC experiment (usually a senior manager from the largest such centre in the country), a representative of each of the experiments; as non-voting members — the Computing Co-ordinators of the experiments, the LCG Project Leader, and leaders of formal activities and projects of the Collaboration. The Chair of the GDB is elected by the voting members of the board for a two-year term. The GDB may co-opt additional non-voting members as it deems necessary. The GDB reports to the LCG Management Board which normally meets immediately after the GDB ratifying the decisions prepared by the GDB.
The Architects Forum manages the work of the Applications Area of the Project. Described in Section 5.8:
An Architects Forum (AF) consisting of the Applications Area Manager (chair), the software architects of the four LHC experiments, the leaders of the various AA software projects and other invited members provides for the formal participation of the experiments in the planning, decision-making and architectural and technical direction of applications area activities. Architects represent the interests of their experiment and contribute their expertise. The AF meets every two weeks and makes decisions about the difficult issues that cannot be resolved in open forums such as the Applications Area meeting. The Applications Area Meeting takes pace fortnightly and provides a forum for information exchange between the project and the LHC experiments.
In addition to the bodies defined in the MoU we should mention here also the Task Forces that have recently been formed to coordinate activities concerned with the usage by the experiments of software and services provided by EGEE and in a broader sense, particularly in the case of Service Challenges, LCG. Each Task Force is run by the experiment concerned and has different functions according to the needs of the experiment, but they have the general function of providing a single and visible communication point between each experiment and LCG deployment/service management in the following areas:
current usage of the LCG services in the EGEE domain and more generally the current Service Challenge -- regular weekly or bi-weekly monitoring of progress, escalating problems, establishing performance and functionality metrics, agreeing priorities and recording agreements;
evaluation and testing of new middleware and services relevant for LCG -- setting clear targets and timescales, monitoring the progress of the testing activity and of the response from the development and support teams, and documenting the conclusion;
medium term planning of the evolution of the usage by the experiment of the LCG services -- documenting the experiment planned requirements and the way in which they will be fulfilled by the service, providing a joint plan that can be monitored by the Task Force;
longer term planning -- agreeing on the relationships between the LCG Phase2 milestones and the internal milestones of the experiments.
EGEE, INFN and CERN/LCG provide human resources at CERN to assist the experiments to use the EGEE grid (the EIS and ARDA/NA4 staff - currently 12 FTEs rising to 20 FTEs in EGEE Phase 2). The Task Forces has an additional function as the communication point between each experiment, EGEE and LCG where agreements are defined on the way in which these staff are used, and how their work relates to defined goals and timetables for testing, evaluating and deploying new developments.
The leaders of the Task Forces are ex officio members of the EGEE Technical Coordination Group.
The membership is decided by each experiment but includes appropriate experts and representatives from middleware, deployment and service management. The Task Forces report from time to time on progress and difficulties concerning the above specific functions to the MB via the experiment MB members.