[arch-d] New IAB Program: Evolvability, Deployability, & Maintainability (EDM)

[IAB Executive Administrative Manager <[e-mail]>]

A new IAB Program has been formed on Evolvability, Deployability, & 
Maintainability (EDM). For additional information, please contact the 
IAB or the Program Lead.

Evolvability, Deployability, & Maintainability (EDM) Program
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IAB Lead:
Tommy Pauly <[e-mail]>

Mailing list:
Address: [e-mail]
To subscribe: https://www.iab.org/mailman/listinfo/edm
Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/edm/


Program Page: https://www.iab.org/activities/programs/evolvability-deployability-maintainability-edm-program/

Program Description:

This program will focus on how to practically encourage best practices 
within the IETF to ensure that the IETF’s standards process considers 
protocol evolution, deployability, and long-term maintainability. This 
group will work on documents that catalog and analyze successful 
strategies for protocol evolution, deployment, and maintenance, such as 
updating and extending RFC 6709. Moreover, it will focus on ways to help 
promote and increase awareness of these strategies within the IETF via 
program meetings, workshops, and helping organize efforts within working 
groups and various IETF teams. The program will include members of the 
IESG and the tools team to help implement these strategies.

The topics this group will consider include:

* Evolvability: Encourage protocols to design for extensibility and 
  greasing, and promote the use of extension points to prevent 
  ossification. Make it easy for people, especially those who aren’t 
  steeped in IETF process, to know which extension points are the right 
  ones to use for a given protocol (and which ones should be considered 
  more stable/ossified), and make sure there aren’t high allocation 
  barriers to use those extension points.

* Deployability: Focus on how we make “running code” something that is 
  better integrated into the working group process. Look at methods to 
  catalog implementations, tools for tracking interoperability testing 
  on different protocol versions, or repositories of which versions of 
  protocols are implemented and used on the Internet. Discuss how 
  deployments can advertise experiments they are running.

* Maintainability: Many working groups have expressed a desire to have 
  ways for the community of protocol designers and implementers to keep 
  track of the current state of affairs in deployment patterns, known 
  errata/bugs, or best practices. Help promote consistent ways to host 
  non-RFC working group output, like FAQs, wikis, and discussion venues. 
  Consider how this community involvement can continue and involve the 
  right experts, even after a working group closes.

The program will:

* Engage with the IETF community and implementers outside of the IETF to 
  identity successes and problem areas, and collect ideas for 
  improvements.
* Work with the IESG and directorates to determine how best practices 
  for evolvability can best be applied during IESG review and IETF last 
  call.
* Work with the IESG and tools team on ways to connect implementers and 
  communities that develop and maintain protocols, both while a working 
  group is active, and after a working group has concluded its charter.