Selecting leadership, take 2

Margaret Wasserman mrw@windriver.com
Sat, 07 Dec 2002 11:26:06 -0500


Hi Dave,

>That is why it would be considerably more productive to look at proffered
>proposals and deal with them directly and immediately.

A quick revolution can only happen when a group reaches the point where
there is nothing left to lose...

IMO, we are pretty far from that point in the IETF right now.  We do
know that there are some serious problems with our organization and our
processes, but there are also a lot of things that we _like_ about the
current IETF, and we have a great deal of important work underway.
So, I would not advocate making a lot of quick changes to perceived
problems and hoping that those changes improve things.

While I agree that there are some serious problems, I would advocate
a slow, iterative approach to solving them.  I'd like to see us do
the following:

         - Identify and _prioritize_ the most obvious or serious
                 problems
         - Pick one or two top priority problems to attempt
                 to solve in the first round of changes
         - Analyze the chosen problems, and determine possible
                 causes
         - Propose and discuss possible solutions
         - Analyze the solutions and choose which to implement
                 and how to implement them
         - Implement the chosen solutions, including careful
                 communication of any changes to the whole
                 IETF, training folks as appropriate, etc.
         - Wait to see what works and what doesn't work
         - Repeat as necessary

We do need to take action to make things better, but we also need to
do it in a way that won't disrupt all of our ongoing work or destroy
the things that we like about working here.

I'd like to see this become an ongoing process within the IETF, where
we are constantly open to identifying problems with our organization
and processes and taking steps to correct them, in a careful and
considered fashion.

I commend our current leadership for listening, for admitting that the
IETF has serious organizational and process problems, and for setting a
course to resolve them.  I believe that we should give our leaders an
opportunity to lead us out of this situation, and I think that we
should offer them our patience and support while they do so.

Margaret