When Crossplane graduated within the CNCF late last year, and Kyverno followed shortly after, the votes marked the culmination of years of work to mature each project and meet the expectations of the TOC. While both projects ultimately reached the same milestone, their journeys looked quite different. In this session, maintainers from Crossplane and Kyverno walk through what it really took to get there.

Crossplane’s first graduation application wasn't quite ready: the TOC raised concerns about vendor neutrality, long-term survivability, and the health of our extension ecosystem. We'll share how the project put this feedback into action by launching a vendor-neutral community registry, migrating release infrastructure to CNCF-owned accounts, and instituting new governance and lifecycle policies for our ecosystem.

Kyverno's first graduation push wasn’t ready either, however their path presented a different set of challenges. We'll discuss how the project addressed questions around maintainer diversity and long-term project sustainability, strengthened the contributor community across organizations, worked through technical, governance, and security due diligence, and partnered closely with the TOC throughout the process.

Together, these experiences highlight that graduation is not about following a single checklist. It's about demonstrating that a project has the technical maturity, governance, and community needed to thrive for years to come.

We'll also cover the follow-up commitments both projects made to the TOC after graduation, because the work of maturing a project never really ends.

Wherever your project sits on the maturity curve, come hear what we went through, the lessons we learned, and how you can make the CNCF maturity process work for your project and community.