Fwd: IETF areas re-organisation steps

[Alia Atlas <[e-mail]>]

FYI -  there is a healthy discussion going on on the ietf discussion list.
Conversation will continue well into January - so if you are catching up
after the new year, your comments will also be greatly valued and
appreciated.

Regards,
Alia


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, Dec 25, 2014 at 2:16 PM
Subject: IETF areas re-organisation steps
To: IETF Announcement List <[e-mail]>
Cc: IETF-Discussion list <[e-mail]>


Dear Community:

In October, we let you know that we would be coming up with some proposals
and consulting with you on the topic of re-organizing the IESG and the IETF
areas with the intent to increase flexibility as IETF work evolves, to
ensure that
all IETF work is covered by an AD, and to balance and reduce the workload
across the ADs [1]. We committed to developing a re-organization proposal by
May 2015 (thus including ADs that will be newly seated in March 2015). We
have taken several steps since then toward that goal: we recommended that
the
nomcom not to fill the APP AD vacancy in the current nomcom cycle [2], and
we
are taking steps to redistribute workload in order to allow for more
resources
to be focused on YANG model coordination [3].

This message provides an outline of further steps we propose to take in 2015
as part of the re-organization and invites community feedback on those
steps.
Step I below is already in progress. Step II in particular requires timely
action, and therefore we are requesting community feedback by January 15,
2015 on that step in particular and on the overall proposal.

None of the steps below should be viewed as permanent or overly constraining
how the IESG and the areas might be organized in future years. In general
we’d
like to increase the ability for the IESG to be flexible going forward. We
are
suggesting the steps below as measures to experiment with as a means to
determine their effectiveness. The IESG intends to continue to re-evaluate
all
of the steps on a regular basis.


PRINCIPLES

The IESG believes the re-organization should proceed according to the
following principles:

1) Agility: The IESG should be able to adapt as Internet engineering
evolves.
When work focus shifts and new technologies emerge, it is critical that the
the IESG can follow the shift and effectively manage the new work.

2) Relevance: The organization of the technical work must facilitate the
IETF's continued relevance to the industry. As we change how we develop
technology throughout the Internet, the IETF must be able to change how our
standards development works with the technology development.

3) Flexibility: The organization of the IESG and of the technical areas
should
accommodate variations in workloads, time commitments, and AD skillsets, as
well as changes in those over time. It is important to make it possible for
more IETF participants to be able to serve as Area Directors and to make the
work co-exist with their normal jobs.

4) Sustainability: The Area Director role should be a position that
accomplished engineers aspire to and that employers want to support. We
should
emphasize the "steering" and "director" aspects, supporting and guiding the
technical work in the working groups.


THREE STEPS

We suggest taking the three steps described below to fulfill these
principles.


I.  FURTHER SHIFTING OF WG RESPONSIBILITY TO OUT-OF-AREA ADS

The ability to react to changes in the industry, for example the IESG YANG
Model Work Redistribution [3], requires flexibility within the IETF
leadership
positions. There are numerous instances where the constituency of a WG
exists
in a particular IETF area, but the most appropriate AD for that work happens
to be in a different area, or where the ADs in the area are simply
overloaded
and an AD outside of the area is perfectly capable of managing the work. To
address these possibilities, the IESG is moving towards a model where a WG
can
exist in one area, but its shepherding AD comes from another area. This
flexibility will allow the IESG to apply its skills where they can be of
most
use while still keeping related WGs together within an area. The IESG
proposes
to experiment with this approach initially by shifting to out-of-area ADs
for
RADEXT, DIME, LMAP, and ANIMA, perhaps with another few WGs to follow.

In order to achieve the above, there is some tools development work needed.
Many components of the IETF tool set (e.g., the datatracker) make
assumptions
about WG/AD relationships based on the WG's assigned area. That issue is
currently being worked on by the tools team, but will take a few months'
time.
During this intermediate period (prior to the tools work completing), the
cross-area shepherding effort will be done informally by the IESG. This
informal approach will address:

a. Shepherding AD - Each WG will still have an AD assigned to it from its
area, referred to as the Home Area AD. The actual shepherding AD will be
temporarily listed as the Technical Advisor. The shepherding AD will be in
charge of all WG management issues. The IESG will develop a way to
explicitly
indicate the shepherding AD on the WG's charter page.

b. E-mail aliases - WG chairs and participants who wish to reach the ADs
for a
WG via the <foo>-ads tools aliases should explicitly include the AD listed
as
Technical Advisor for the WG.

c. Document shepherding - When a WG chair submits a publication request,
that
request will flow to the Home Area AD. The Home Area AD should then delegate
shepherding responsibilities to the shepherding AD for handling.

d. Appeals - IETF participants should be directed to send any appeals
related
to the WG to the shepherding AD rather than the Home Area AD.


II.  ADDING A THIRD RTG AD

The IESG is considering requesting that the currently seated nomcom select
an
additional routing AD, such that two new routing ADs, rather than one, would
be seated for two-year terms in spring 2015. The reasoning behind this
request
is that the load in the RTG area is currently unsustainably high. The
placement of a third AD will have the effect of spreading that load such
that
the time requirement may now be more consistent with the work loads of ADs
in
other areas. The total number of ADs on the IESG would not change if the APP
seat remains vacant.

This request is further justified by the considerable increase in
management-related work in the RTG area. Specifically, there are a lot of
new
YANG models being written. Although the coordination of YANG across the IETF
falls as the responsibility of the OPS ADs (specifically the Management AD)
it
is expected that the RTG ADs will need to work on an increasing number of
YANG
documents as well.

If an additional RTG AD were to be seated, the IESG would propose to move
three working groups from the INT area to the RTG area to balance AD loads:
L2TPEXT, LISP, and TRILL.

As with all of the proposed organizational changes, the IESG would expect to
re-evaluate the need for this third RTG AD in future years and balance that
need against the need to have other skill sets or more generalist roles
represented on the IESG.

Work is underway to create support for this model in our process
documentation:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dawkins-iesg-one-or-more-04.


III.  MERGING OF UPPER LAYER PROTOCOL AREAS

As previously noted [1], a significant amount of the work that is going on
in
the APP area pertains to the web protocols, but that has a good deal of
crossover with work in RAI. There is also some crossover work between the
APP
and TSV areas. To accommodate these overlaps and provide better WG
management
across these three areas, the IESG is proposing to merge the APP, RAI, and
TSV
areas into one combined Network Applications (NAPP) area. From March
2015-March 2016, this combined area would be overseen by the five remaining
ADs from APP, RAI, and TSV, with some redistribution of WG shepherding
responsibilities among them to balance workloads. DISPATCH, TSVWG, and
APPSAWG
would continue to function much as they currently do.

The NAPP ADs would continue to encourage progress towards closure of the
many
WGs in the area that are close to completing their chartered work. As such,
the IESG would expect to request in the 2015-16 nomcom cycle a reduction in
NAPP AD headcount, yielding four seated NAPP ADs starting in March 2016. If
possible, we could reduce down to 4 NAPP ADs prior to that time and
re-assign
the fifth AD’s duties to further help balance IESG load.

Jari Arkko for the IESG


REFERENCES

[1] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg13314.html
[2] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg13364.html
[3] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg13576.html