Merge pull request #2181 from Nordix/adopter-interview-coi-policy

Include adopter interview participant guidance in DD process

Author: angellk

operations/dd-toc-guide.md

@@ -219,6 +219,8 @@ To ease scheduling with adopters, TOC members are recommended to either include
 
 It is anticipated that a minimum of three adopter interviews are required to appropriately ascertain adoption of a project. However in the course of interviewing, you may find that you need additional adopters or types of adopters to be interviewed.
 
+> **Note on Interview Participant Composition:** TOC members should prioritize interviewing adopter contacts who work with the project in an operational or user capacity. If the primary contact is a project maintainer or holds a project governance role, ask them to include a colleague from the same organization who uses the project operationally. Contributors from adopting organizations who have become maintainers can reflect strong community engagement, which is a positive signal. However, if such interviewees make up a meaningful proportion of the pool, overall results may skew overly positive. If you do not feel you have collected enough diverse perspectives, request interviews with additional adopters.
+
 For projects moving from Incubation to Graduation, if considerable time has passed since Incubation (according to the TOC's judgement), the TOC should refresh the Adopter interviews. This may be done by reaching out to previous interviewees, by engaging a new group of adopters for interviews, or some combination thereof. If the time period between Incubation and Graduation is fairly recent, the TOC member(s) should exercise their judgement in choosing to pursue additional interviews. That decision should be recorded with justification in the adoption section of the template.
 
 #### Recording Responses

operations/toc-templates/template-adopter-interview-request.md

@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 
 This template is intended to be leveraged by TOC members in the scheduling of adopter interviews for projects moving levels.
 
+> **Before sending:** Aim to interview contacts who work with the project in an operational or user capacity. If the primary contact is a project maintainer or holds a project governance role, ask them to include a colleague from the same organization who uses the project operationally. If you need more diverse perspectives, ask for additional interviewees. See the [DD guide](../dd-toc-guide.md#conducting-adopter-interviews) for details.
+
 Subject: Adopter Interview Request: CNCF $PROJECT
 
 Message Body