Re: Deployment Cases

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Spencer Dawkins wrote:
 > I think I kinda do see what Brian's point is.
...
As an organization of individuals developing protocol specifications - that's who we are, and that's what we do - we don't even have a natural way to interact with operators,
...
I think Brian is saying the same thing about economic/financial analysis


We do not need to conduct intricate analysis, nevermind economic analysis.

However we do need to have a basis for believing that the work we are doing will actually get used. Anyone investing years of effort ought to have a basis for believing not only that a document will get produced but that it will result in implementations and that the implementations will get deployed and that the deployments will get used.

Otherwise, we are spending aggregate millions of dollars per standard as an academic exercise.

At base, this falls into the category of "market research". The fact that we are engineers does not mean that we get pretend market issues are irrelevant.

Consider job hunting. Most people care about the nature of the work but they also care about whether they will get paid. They assess a variety of factors, to decide that a reliable paycheck will be forthcoming. That process of assessment is a kind of business analysis. Even engineers do it.

This used to be well understood in the IETF. And as we turn out process document after process document, we ought to consider how little we pay attention to ones we have had around for a long time.

Consider IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures, <http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2418.txt>:

2.1. Criteria for formation

   When determining whether it is appropriate to create a working group,
   the Area Director(s) and the IESG will consider several issues:
...
    - What are the risks and urgency of the work, to determine the level
      of effort required?
...
    - Does a base of interested consumers (end-users) appear to exist
      for the planned work?  Consumer interest can be measured by
      participation of end-users within the IETF process, as well as by
      less direct means.

The rest of the list is pretty interesting, I think, but these two bullets pertain to the current thread: A basis for assessing urgency and community pull, to use the result.

d/
--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net

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