Re: WGs/AD [IETF areas re-organisation steps]

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

On 12/26/14 8:52 PM, Alia Atlas wrote:
> There are a few things we can do.  Some things that I've been trying to
> do in Routing include:
>   a) discouragement of progressing many use-case and requirements drafts.
>       We had drifted towards having WGs producing some to help
> articulate what
>       needed to be done - but then more and more appear and only some
>       actually provide more useful feedback to the architecture or
> protocol.  I
>       would rather see WGs produce things that can be implemented with the
>       necessary context than spend years working on use-cases and
> requirements.
>       I'm past the waterfall model of software development.
> 
>   b) Encourage WG chairs to think about the need for ACTIVE consensus rather
>       than passive.  If there isn't the enthusiasm to review and improve
> a draft or
>       implement it, then does it really need to be an RFC?
> 
>   c) Better and early cross-WG review once a draft is adopted as a WG draft.
>       Well-written drafts without serious issues are much faster to
> manage, review,
>       and progress.
> 
>   d) Be willing to let WGs fail - by also letting them just get on with
> doing solutions.

These are all things I'd love to see implemented across the
organization, as well as raising the bar on BOFs - I've seen
some ADs put a massive amount of effort into BOFs that are
held around ideas that aren't fully-formed (it's not necessarily
that they're bad ideas, but rather the problem is that the
proposals are awfully immature).

I've been trying to decide what I think of the proposed
reorganization and I guess I'm neutral on it - it seems that
the workload problem isn't necessarily going to go away with
a reorganization, but that the two problems (structural
efficiency and manageable workload) would need to be
tackled in parallel.  I think Alia's list is a good start
on the workload issue.

Melinda