Comments on the Problem Statement draft: Document structure
Charlie Perkins
charliep at iprg.nokia.com
Mon Oct 6 17:44:45 CEST 2003
Hello folks,
I have some comments on the draft. I'll break it down into
three different e-mail messages, because otherwise I am
afraid that many points might be lost.
I believe that the document structure causes the
document to lose effectiveness. It can be improved by
some pretty basic reorganization:
- The "Changes" sections should be moved into an
appendix (or multiple appendices)
- The "Acknowledgement" section (currently 1.4) should
be moved to be the last section before the normative
references.
- In Section (2), the first part of the section should
itemize the list of root causes, e.g.:
= Unclear Mission
= Poor Use of Effective Engineering Practice
= Standards Process Abuse
= Workload exceeds available staffing levels
= Unsuitable Management Structure
= Poor WG dynamics
= Inadequate Staff Preparation
This text should be placed before section 2.1.
I know that the IETF participants are "Staff", because
I have two IETF t-shirts that say so. Also I would
strongly encourage _short_ formulations for the "root
causes", because long rambling formulations just don't
get the point across anywhere near as well.
A statement is made that the "Unclear Mission" root
cause is the "fundamental" cause. I don't believe it.
I think it's much more a case of arbitrary procedures
applied selectively according to circumstance and
personal preference. When I discuss with people at
the IETF, I may often hear a point of view that I don't
agree with. But I rarely would characterize it as not
having a clue about mission. Without formulating a
proposed "mission statement" to try to prove my
point, I would at least like to strongly suggest that the
characterization in section 2., preceding section 2.1,
is wrong. If I had to pick out a more fundamental
root cause, it would be "Unsuitable Management
Structure", at least from the current formulation for
the set of root causes.
Thus, I would suggest demoting section 2.2 to be placed
_much_ later in section 2.
More in another e-mail coming shortly.
Regards,
Charlie P.
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