Re: Is this an elephant? [Was: call for ideas: tail-heavy IETF process]

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On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 6:29 PM, Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 05/17/2013 04:36 PM, Yoav Nir wrote:
On May 17, 2013, at 6:37 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 5/17/2013 7:01 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
But WGs should be able to periodically summarize what they're doing -
what problem they're trying to solve, what approach they're taking, what
technologies they're using, what major decisions they've made, what the
current sticking points seem to be, what problems are as yet unresolved,
what potential for cross-group and cross-area effects have been
identified, and what efforts have been made to get the affected parties
in the loop.   For most groups that summary should be maybe 2-3 pages.
The ADs should be able to verify that those summaries are accurate and
reasonably complete, or appoint a trusted WG observer other than the
chair to review each summary. ADs and other members of the community
should be able to view those summaries and comment on their accuracy.

The idea that working groups should be required to issue periodic project progress reports seems strikingly reasonable and useful.

This makes the folks who are the most knowledgeable responsible for assessing their work, and should facilitate public review. Recording the sequence of reports into the wg datatracker could nicely allow evaluating progress over time.

It also, of course, nicely distributes the work.

d/
"
From: WG Chair
To: ietf@xxxxxxxx
Sunbject: Progress Report - Foo WG

There has been zero activity on the FOO list in the last three months (except for that "Fake Conference" message everybody got last month). I've tried emailing the WG document authors twice, but they're not answering my emails.

So, the WG has 2 documents: draft-ietf-foo-use-cases-03, and draft-ietf-foo-proto-01.

The use case document is just about done, but we haven't really started discussing the proto document. We haven't met in Orlando, and are unlikely to meet in Berlin

That's it for this report.

Cheers

WGC

"

Instead of a WG progress report, what I had in mind was a separate report for each work item.   The report should briefly describe

1. The purpose of the work being undertaken
2. A description of the work being undertaken (including mention of major technologies on which the work is based)
3. All known parties and interests likely to be affected by the work
4. The current state of the work (what's been done, what hasn't been done)
5. Any major issues that have been identified but not resolved
6. Pointers to the WG's charter, the datatracker pages for each of the current draft document(s) associated with that work item, and any other useful material (e.g. open issues list, summaries of design decisions already taken and the rationale for each)

A person who is knowledgeable about current Internet protocols should be able to read that single document and understand what the WG is doing with this particular work item, what state it's in, whether or not it will affect that person's are of interest, and where to look for detailed information.


This seems like a good idea, although maybe a bit formal.
IMO, big surprises at the tail end that cause lots of work to
be thrown out are evidence of a management failure. 
The IESG and WG chairs should be more proactive wrt/ avoiding
late surprises from ever happening.

I notice that nowhere on this list is any mention of the charter milestones
or dates.  Is the Foo Proto draft due in 14 months or is it 14 months behind
schedule?  If the latter, why isn't the Foo WG meeting at the IETF?



Keith


Andy


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