Also, as efforts become more interconnected, working groups have "customers" even within the IETF. It's not good if working group A can't proceed in publishing a spec because of normative references from working group B that can't get its act together. In that sense, milestones are a contract between a working group and the larger community. In particular, it's a contract between the spec authors/editors and the larger community. A spec in a WG work item generally gets some amount of exclusivity, in that the working group isn't going to consider a similar spec by a competing set of authors. (There are exceptions in highly contentious working groups, obviously.) However, that only works if the authors deliver on time. Otherwise, an effort should have been made to find (cajole, entice, browbeat, sweet-talk) authors that have more time. Milestones that are enforced are also useful to make resources available. Speaking from recent working group experience, if a deadline matters, employers are suddenly that much more willing to let people work on the spec. Managers tend to understand the notion of a deadline. Michel Py wrote: > > > Dave Crocker wrote: > > and, by the way, there is plenty of experience suggesting that > > time pressure often improves quality. it focuses the group > > and emphasizes near-term utility. within discussions about > > project management, it is usually recognized that milestones > > are not merely for measuring progress but also for motivating > > it. > > I agree. In the case of the IETF, the worst part is that the milestones and/or deadlines are self-chosen. I have complained myself about some marketing bozo fixing arbitrary or unrealistic deadlines just because the product has to ship that day. This is not the way the IETF works. First, we can choose our own deadlines and second we can move them if we under-evaluated the time it would take. What is wrong is the generalized feeling that missing a deadline by two years (for a 6-month project) is ok. And the same is true for WG charters. Why do we have charters and milestones if nobody tries to meet them? Is it the way IETFers work at their day-time job? > > And please, don't give me the crap "we do it for free". I do it for free, too. Quality has a little to do with money and a lot with engineers being interested, motivated, intellectually challenged, that kind of thing. > > Michel. > > - > This message was passed through ietf_censored@carmen.ipv6.cselt.it, which > is a sublist of ietf@ietf.org. Not all messages are passed. > Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Raffaele D'Albenzio.