Hi, Henning,
This was the most thought-provoking of your recent posts for me, so I
spent a little time thinking before trying to contribute to the
thread...
You have served us well by pointing these problems out. The meta-issue
for me is, of course, how we move forward on any of these problems.
Spencer
I suspect each regular IETF participant knows WGs that are well-led
and others that could stand improvement. WG chairs are crucial in
ensuring progress, but there doesn't seem to be any real, transparent
evaluation of their efforts. Some possibilities:
(1) It is hard to "fire" WG chairs - they are often friends and
colleagues. Unfortunately, many stay on when their job
responsibilities have changed and they can no longer dedicate the
necessary time.
Solution: Institute WG chair term limits of (say) one or two years.
That way, there is an expectation of change and the possibility for
more people to prove themselves. With two chairs, staggering terms
ensures continuity.
This is actually several conflated topics -
- working group chair selection
- working group chair term limits
- working group chair accountability
all of which matter, and all of which could probably be improved.
My thoughts are:
- if we were asking for (periodic re-)commitments from working group
chairs, would we still be asking for term limits?
- we are all also aware of people in leadership roles who continue to
commit and continue to miss commitments. How long does it actually
take to figure out that a WG chair "can no longer dedicate the
necessary time?"
- every working group is different, and every {1,2,3} set of of WG
chairs is different. We can give guidance on WG chair selection, but
hard boundaries are probably harder - it's easy to say "at least one
WG chair must be experienced", but how much experience is enough, etc.
It does not help that some of the goals are conflicting (developing
new chairs vs. chair continuity). Would a BCP on WG chair selection
(and reselection, if we thought of WG chair services as terms) be
helpful, or just process silliness?
(2) Some chairs are primarily active during the 3-week period prior
to the IETF meeting and moderate the meeting. They should consider
themselves project/product managers, not primarily as meeting
moderators. WG chair training needs to involve basic project
management training or WG selection should favor individuals that
have demonstrated their ability to deliver projects and products and
to manage people in doing so. If necessary, those with mostly
technical interests can serve on directorates.
Two related problems here, as you pointed out in another posting -
when the WG is only active for six weeks per year, and when the WG
chair is only active for nine weeks per year. I don't see how we can
focus on this with our current milestone tracking ("no, really, we'll
finish that draft by the NEXT meeting, this time for sure"), so your
comments in the "front-end delays" thread apply here as well.
(3) All WGs should have a WG secretary as a "junior chair", keeping
track of deadlines, LC comments and the like. WG secretaries need to
be listed on the WG web page. The expectation is that a good WG
secretary will be promoted to chair, thus providing an incentive.
Some WGs do this today, but it seems rare. (I don't think any are
listed on WG pages.)
Henning
It is irritating that our process explicitly allows for WG
secretaries, but almost no WGs use them. Perhaps if people contacted
WG chairs and volunteered, instead of waiting for WG chairs to wake up
and stop trying to take their own minutes, etc?
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