Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)

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I haven't counted the number of times were deadlines were missed this
week alone with no consequences.

For example, in a WG I attended this morning, the chair asked a person
about a document he promised to write.  The person answered that he'd do
this in the next month.  The chair replied that he said that last time as
well.  Some laughter followed, but that was the end of it.

I would consider this a problem (cultural and otherwise), not a desirable state of affairs. If you mean that this requires more than just adding tools, I agree. I tend to believe the old saw that "we manage what we measure". Currently, we have a creeping bias of low expectations and no good way to measure if things are getting worse or better.

In volunteer organizations, organizations that don't ask anything of their members tend to get what they ask for. (There have been interesting economics papers on why mainstream, low-commitment churches in the West have had difficulties keeping members. But I digress.)


I agree.  But companies change priorities and with that the time people
can spend on ID's.  In this case, there is little we can do.

In extremis, WG chairs can re-assign the work to some other party or parties. If no other party is interested in doing the work, the draft must not be all that important after all. Forcing a do-or-die decision avoids wasting time of all parties concerned. I suspect that this will also trigger a discussion between employer and employee which will magically make time available.


I can see a solution (have get commitment from employers before assigning
work to a person) but this will require a major change in the basic way we
work.

I don't see "exported" commitments as useful since they won't be enforceable unless you add a performance bond. No, I'm not currently suggesting performance bonds...



Yes, but I rarely see this happen in the IETF.

Maybe that's a bug, not a feature. It is currently difficult to pull the plug since the tardy author can easily say "all other documents are late, why pick on me?".

As a meta comment, saying that culture cannot change is the first and most obvious sign of a dying organization. I'm not claiming that you're claiming immutability, but I do hear variations on this in various remarks.

Henning

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