[mpowr] Re: process-only participation in WG [Troops vs superpower]

[Alex Conta <[e-mail]>]

Pekka Savola wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Alex Conta wrote:
> 
>>You say you've been told "IETF does not have enough folks willing to do 
>>process management only, without the technical work".
>>
>>I believe that.
>>
>>But a separation of process management from technical work, in case of N 
>>WGs in IETF, will allow X to chair WG A, and do technical work in as 
>>many WGs as X wants except A, which is N-1 WGs.
>>
>>So I do not see why you stopped?  Individual X can do both process 
>>management and technical work.
> 
> [...]
> You assume that capable individuals are willing to do process
> management in those WGs which they're not interested of (because, if
> they were, they would be participating to the WG making them uncapable
> to act as WG chair).
> 

I am not sure what you assume by "capable". People in IETF may have good 
technical capabilities, good people and process capabilities, or all of 
them.

Assuming the latter, the reality is that there are so many relationships 
between WGs, or between areas in IETF. You yourself probably follow and 
contribute one way or another to several WGs, based on your personal 
interest. Chairing one of these WG, would just imply that you would not 
be a document editor, for instance, prior or during chairing that group. 
By the way this is a rule that exist today.

On the other hand, I think it is quite possible that a "process, and 
people" capable person to find it very interesting to chair  a WG, in 
which it has no technical interest.

> That is a huge assumption in the real world.  Chairing is a lot of 
> work. 
> 

Indeed chairing is a lot of work, and a lot of responsibility. I mean 
here process and people managament work. But chairs combine today this 
work, with too many technical roles: technical leader, architect, 
editor, reviewer, etc...  in the same WG. This is bad, because it is one 
of the reasons some WGs are so purely managed - too many - and IETF has 
timely delivery problems, and other problems as well.

Furthermore, the time when IETF was a couple of tens, or hundreds of 
people has long passed.  IETF is nolonger a "small business", where X is
50% of the employees, and is performing %50 of the jobs ... It is a 
prestigious international open standards organization, well attended, 
whith a lot of work to do, and a lot of responability on its own 
sholders, including the creation of an environment of fairness, which is 
essential for developing standards.

The average attendance in the last 5 years or so was way above 1000, in 
some cases going well over 2000. There is a large pool of people willing 
and able to do the technical work, and there is a considerable pool of 
people willing and able to do chairing WGs. People working in this 
industry make choices for a managerial path, or technical path in their 
companies. They make that choice in other major SDOs, and they can do 
that in IETF as well.


 > Why would I (or someone else) want to waste time on something
 > that I don't even find interesting, while I could use the same time to
 > contribute technically in other WGs?

Back to your question, I will answer with a question:

Do you mean that you would accept to be a WG chair, only if you can be 
the technical leader, the architect, the editor, and the reviewer of the WG?

Alex