Re: [mpowr] WG Formation

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

Folks,


Since John and Harald seem to be missing the points I've been trying to
make, I will assume that others are also missing it.  So, here is a
concise re-statement:


The IETF is good at facilitating working groups that have clear,
practical direction, with significant participation and an ability to
conduct productive discussion in a timely fashion.

The IETF has a poor track record of "fixing" broken working groups. In
particular, working groups that lack cohesive, productive discussion
rarely change.

Problematic working groups are a significant drain on IETF resources,
including time for management oversight, consumption of valuable
participant time, and consumption of scarce meeting time. Problematic
working groups also have an opportunity cost. They set expectations for
a solution that is, in fact, unlikely to be produced in a timely or
useful fashion.

It is to the IETF's general benefit to find ways to avoid this waste of
resources and tone of frustration and non-productivity.

One approach that will help is to require that working group formation
be predicated on a demonstrated ability to conduct productive discussion
over a mailing list and with enough participation to demonstrate
meaningful constituency.

This _adds_ to the list of IETF BOF and working group chartering
pre-requisites. It requires that groups expected to be productive and
timely first show that they can be. In fact, this requirement is already
listed as being optional, in RFC 2418 (IETF Working Group Guidelines and
Procedures), before holding a pre-chartering BOF.

So the only change would be to make it always required, before
chartering and before holding a pre-chartering BOF.


An alternative would be to continue to charter working groups that lack
a track record for timely productivity, and continue to task the working
group chairs and cognizant area director with fixing the working groups
that fail to become coherent and productive in a timely fashion.

The problem with this approach is that it is very expensive and it does
not work. It has not worked reliably -- and probably has not worked at
all -- for any of the life of the modern IETF. Rather, it dilutes
allocations of time and focus, and it reduces the community sense of
productivity. All three of these are, in fact, problematic in the
current IETF.

Over the life of the IETF, some area directors have employed the policy
of requiring a group to demonstrate the requisite capabilities, before
chartering as an IETF working group.  In fact, some area directors have
required this before permitting a BOF to be held.  A BOF session is
very short and BOFs drain from the total pool of congested IETF
meeting time.

The suggestion is to move this requirement from "sometimes" to "always",
just as we always require a coherent charter with constituency support,
before creating a working group.

This moves the responsibility for timely productivity entirely to the
nascent working group, rather than imposing any of that requirement on
IETF management.

The nascent group must, of course, interact with IETF management and
IETF participants. However there is a considerable difference between
the obligations and costs of dealing with chartered efforts, versus
other efforts. Hence, a nascent group's ability to recruit participation
and assistance is a significant "market" test of that group's effort.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:[phone]>


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