Excuse top posting, please. Many of the issues related to WG progress can be managed using the excellent web tools provided at tools.ietf.org - see for example: http://tools.ietf.org/wg/ccamp/ This site makes review quick and easy. Clicking on a draft title gets you not just txt but a nits check and diffs from any previous versions. See: draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-ason-lexicography-02.txt The top menu includes links to email the WG Chair(s) and: Drafts | Agendas | Minutes | Charter | List Archive making it easy to review the Charter, check the list archive for comments on a given draft, and review minutes etc. There is also a link to a Draft dependency graph at the top of the drafts page. The graph shows you where cross area review might help a draft progress, as well as highlighting blocking drafts, expired work, etc. If every WG had and used such a page to triage work based on blocks and cross-area dependencies things might move faster. Authors (and WG reviewers) can also use the nits/diffs/and list archives to make sure that individual documents are in shape to move forward. Getting people to use the tools is a seperate issue. Just another mash note from a tools.ietf.org fan... Lucy E. Lynch Academic User Services Computing Center University of Oregon llynch @darkwing.uoregon.edu (541) 346-1774 On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, Henning Schulzrinne wrote: > There has been a fair amount of effort in accelerating the tail end > of the document process, i.e., after IETF last call. It is unclear > whether this has succeeded (as there don't seem to be any published > measurements), but I believe that the main problem with timeliness is > now in the WG process itself. Each case is unique, but there are a > disturbing number of modest-size documents that have taken 3 to 5 > years from first individual draft to RFC. In a separate message, I'll > have more process- and people-oriented suggestions, but here are some > simple things that would at least allow us to measure, and thus > manage, delays: > > (1) Problem: Currently, the mapping between charter items and drafts > is often vague and those not intimately involved with the process are > often left to guess which draft(s) meant to address which charter item. > > Proposal: Once the I-Ds have been created, the charter is updated to > reflect I-D names. This doesn't have to be done for every single > draft, but doing such an update once for each IETF meeting seems > easy, as there are no substantive changes. > > (2) The I-D tracker should keep track of the charter deadline for > each document so that the author and WG chairs can trivially see > whether a document is on track or not. [This item can obviously be > used to automatically generate (1).] > > (3) At each WG meeting, it should be expected that after the agenda > bashing, the delivery schedule for each draft is reviewed, maybe with > a red (already out of schedule), yellow (likely to miss schedule) and > green (possible/likely to meet schedule) indication. > > (4) Just like the RFC editor and IANA provides statistics, each area > should provide an overview of its status at the IESG plenary, > indicating the major work items of each WG and whether the WG is > generally on schedule or behind. Again, one could imagine a color > coding, e.g., if 30% or more of the charter items are "in the red", > the WG is flagged red. > > Clearly, WG chairs and ADs could "game" the system to make the WG > look on time, by continuously adjusting schedules or by having > deadlines a decade out. That itself, however, would provide an > indication that a WG is not meeting deadlines or is planning to be > really slow. If one wanted to, one could indicate both original and > current deadline for work items. > > None of these items make things faster, but they would allow the IETF > management to apply project management tools, such as reducing scope, > replacing authors, or working group chairs, with some efficiency. > More on hypotheses for why things are late in another note. > > Henning > > > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf