The purpose of this document is to aid in the development of Tekton features by evaluating Tekton features against those who will be using them.
When considering requirements and implementation solutions it's useful look at who uses Tekton to have a better understanding of how something should work. The Tekton user profiles describe the different types of users and contributors to Tekton along with the order of priority they have relative to each other. The ordering is because nothing can share the exact same priority and we want to convey that.
- What's described here are user profiles as opposed to personas. Personas are example actors rather than general categories. A single persona can potentially match with multiple user profiles at the same time.
- Kubernetes Cluster Operators are out of scope for this document. A cluster operator is one who manages the operation of a Kubernetes cluster where applications and pipelines can run.
Profiles describe a type of role a user may perform. A real person may perform more than one role and have more than one profile apply to them. How this mapping works between profiles and real people can vary between companies and other organizations. To handle this variation we focus on the user profiles rather than how they may map to people in these different organizations.
Pipeline operators define, schedule, monitor, and otherwise operate pipelines across one or more Kubernetes clusters. For example, the operation of a set of Kaniko build pipelines and Argo CD pipelines. This is not to be confused with the role of a Kubernetes cluster operator. This is also not to be confused with the application's operator role, who would oversee a product in production.
Distributors are people who package application pipelines for someone else to operate. Examples of this would be those who maintain Tekton's Catalog for Kaniko and ArgoCD.
Platform builders are people who wrap Tekton's core engine and libraries to extend it. An example of this is the platform being built by Jenkins X using Tekton pipelines.
An application developer writes the software for an application. An application developer is focused on releasing product updates with high quality as quickly as possible. Examples of this include the developers of WordPress and MySQL.
Supporting tool developers build tools adjacent to Tekton, such as plugins, pipeline visualizations, pipeline debugging tools, Tekton's tkn command line tool, or even kubectl. These are developers building complementary things that can be used along with Tekton.
Tekton developers are those who develop Tekton itself. That includes core maintainers along with anyone else who fixes a bug or updates docs.
Generally speaking, the developers of Tekton and its interfaces consider the end users above themselves when looking at requirements and implementation strategies.
Some user profiles are not considered in scope for Tekton. That does not mean a real person who multiple profiles apply to is not considered a supported user. Rather, the out of scope profiles apply to roles that are not typically supported.
A cluster operator stands up and operates a Kubernetes cluster. This includes elements such as the control plane, nodes, and elements in the stack below these. It does not include pipelines running on Kubernetes as those are handled by the Pipeline Operator profile.
Application operators take an application and operate it within a Kubernetes cluster. For example, the operation of WordPress and MySQL. These activities are irrelevant to Tekton unless the activity naturally intersects with Tekton as in the Pipeline Operator profile.