On Mar 28, Ian Cooper <ian@THE-COOPERS.ORG> wrote: > True, though I thought LOC counting was done as an initial metric until > (much) better things were found. Actually it's what poor management did until (much) better management were found to replace them. LOC has no value to anybody other than people who want to fire you for replacing a 2000 line C++ program with one line of shell script. > I found the parts of the document that would enable more subjective > measurements (like documenting the progress of documents within the group) > more interesting than the actual "counting". The question is, why measure? Management in large corps measure things because they have nothing else to do and would rather look at a series of pie charts than actually go and talk to guys on the shop floor. What is the objective perceived in measuring anything around the IETF? If you read the draft, pretty early on we encounter the following: "Historically, the IETF has an excellent track record; however, as it has grown, there often is concern that IETF efforts are becoming less efficient and perhaps less effective. To date, the community has relied on its subjective sense of this change. Evaluation techniques are needed that are both objective and useful." At no point is there an explanation as to why these evaluation techniques are required - to say there "is often concern" is a bit of a cop out. Now, I'm not saying this shouldn't have been written and the authors have wasted their time, but am I the only one who thinks this smells a little of an attempt at the over-engineering of a voluntary group? Not a criticism, just an observation, and I'd be grateful for input on why measuring performance is something that should be applied to the IETF. Oh, actually, I think it's a great idea if we're going to link it all to performance related pay... :-) -- Paul Robinson