Re: [mif] The formation of the design team

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Margaret,


On 03/04/2013 18:34, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> Hi Brian,
> 
>> I think the real question is whether the architecture issue
>> that underlies MIF can actually be solved within the limits
>> of an IETF WG. But certainly the first stage is to produce a
>> clear statement of what the issue is, and I would press the
>> design team to bring that statement back to the WG *before*
>> considering possible solutions.
> 
> There are already two sources of information about "the problem" available:
> 
> (1) The problem statement we published last year.

Meaning RFC 6418, I assume. Well yes, that is what the WG is supposed to
be doing - I assumed from Hui's message that this was a design team for
some specific subset of MIF's problem set.

> (2) The slides Ted Lemon presented in Orlando.

Again, I would have expected a reference to that it the announcement.
It was by no means obvious to people who did not attend.

As a matter of fact I very much like those slides, especially slide 9.

Unfortunately I believe what I said above: the scope of the underlying
problem is very broad and very hard to solve. It would take a lot more than
one email to really justify that statement, but I think the design team will
have to scope their work very narrowly to focus on partial solutions.

> 
> I don't see how we would benefit from going through another multi-year effort to identify "the problem".  Maybe it is true that when we start looking at the solution space, we will decide that there is no tractable way to solve the problem, but we'll never figure that out if we don't look at the solution space at some point…
> 
> There are already solutions out there that solve (parts of) the problem, too, and we attempted to document those, as well.
> 
>> BTW, it's normal for a design team to have a sort of mini-charter
>> that consists of more than two words.
> 
> 
> In my experience, design teams have varied a lot both in formality and organization. 

Yes, but a few more words of explanation would have made things a *lot* clearer.

> During the first call, we will talk to the design team about how we want to organize ourselves.
> 
> Like all design teams, of course, anything the team produces will just be input to the WG…  We would need WG consensus to adopt it or publish it.

Thanks.

On 04/04/2013 00:48, Ted Lemon wrote:

> However, it may be that you or Michael are concerned that process isn't being followed.   It could be argued that the meeting Hui announced is really an interim working group meeting and not a design team meeting.   If that's the case, then the two week notice requirement applies.

No, I have no problem with concept of a design team; a smaller group can often
do a better job on a multi-faceted problem than a big group.

      Brian