Henning and Spencer,
first of all I think Henning's idea is a nice one. I think that there
should be some kind of a way to both get rid of chairs that are in the
way of progress in a humane manner and they do not understand it
themselves. However, I think (or at least hope) these kind of people are
in the minority.
I think also there should be some check points where chairs that feel
that they do not have the time or interest to devote to their WG anymore
could jump safely out without loosing face or having a feeling that they
let the WG down. If there would be a natural way to do this and possibly
a natural candidate (the WG secretary) maybe people would do it more
often.
Cheers,
Jonne.
On Mon, 2005-06-20 at 16:24, ext Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
> Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>
> > - 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?
>
> I doubt it if it is a more formality.
>
>
> >
> > - 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?"
>
> There are, I believe, two answers to that:
>
> (1) It's too difficult and conflict-inducing to try to evaluate this for
> each WG, so a term limit acts as a safety mechanism, limiting the damage
> and allowing a face-saving retreat.
>
> (2) I supect most of us know which WGs are well-run and which just kind
> of exist, with brief spurts of activity, so asking the members might be
> one step. If we were serious about meeting deadlines, we could have
> measurable metrics of achievement (see previous message).
>
>
>
> >
> > - 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?
>
> Based on personal experience, the problem has not been with the
> selection of WG chairs initially in most cases. Since many WG chairs, by
> definition, do this for the first time, it is very difficult to predict
> how well they do in that role. Personally, I wouldn't appoint somebody
> unless they have non-IETF project management or other significant
> second-level management experience, but I'm not sure you would want to
> institute that as a rule.
>
> The problem is that perfectly nice and technically capable people
> - lose interest
> - change companies
> - get promoted
> - underestimate time required (or overestimate time available)
> - underestimate the tedium of dealing with administrivia and keeping
> dozens of projects (drafts) inching along
> - underestimate the non-technical skills required to do the job
>
> All of these are hard to predict ahead of time. I'd much rather give
> more people a chance to prove themselves, but with the expectation that
> the chance is either strictly time-limited and/or performance-monitored.
> I think that's a more open way to run an organization rather than trying
> to establish criteria for taking on a position (and hoping that these
> are predictive of success).
>
>
> > 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.
>
> I think we agree that performance-tracking would make these "seasonal"
> WGs more obvious to the community and the AD management.
>
> >
> > 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?
>
> This is an incentive thing: Currently, besides the goodness of one's
> heart, there is no real incentive to do this. Other volunteer
> organizations have expected chains of succession, i.e., a technical
> committee secretary/vice chair/treasurer has a good shot at the corner
> office job. This only works if the marquee jobs are time-limited.
>
> Henning
>
>
>
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--
Jonne Soininen
Nokia
Tel: +358 40 527 46 34
E-mail: jonne.soininen@xxxxxxxxx
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