Longer or more meetings?

[john.loughney@nokia.com]

Hi Margaret,

> I actually _do_ believe that the open process of the IETF (if
> it were actually used consistently) should produce higher quality
> results, but it is certainly slower than a more closed, corporate-
> sponsored process carried out by full-time standardizers...
> And, at times, I think that we may be too focused on quality.
> We have a three-step standards process and we can (and usually
> do) cycle at each level, so it should be possible for us to
> produce iteratively higher quality and more stable specifications.
> It seems, though, that even the smallest detail can hold up a
> specification at any level, even a specification that is _much_
> better across the board than the current RFC version.  This
> destroys our ability to successively iterate towards a strong
> final product.

So, should we focus on 'the smallest detail' part?  I think
that this might point to an important process point.  Why does
this happen & who are the folks holding up the entire spec on
the smallest detail?  I think this is one of the major reasons
we can't progress documents more efficiently.

> People keep saying that they want standards out faster, and that
> our standards are often too late to be "relevant".  Well, we
> all know that you can ship a product faster using a smaller,
> team of dedicated people, but perhaps that leads to a lower
> qualify result...  So, how do we want to balance these factors?

Is 'faster' what people really saying?  I have heard that term
'unpredictable' or 'indeterministic' quite often as well.  I think
what is really needed is to have a better way to estimate how
long some work will take and how to ensure it gets done by the
time people need it.
=20
> One trade-off in the area of "relevance" may be when we start
> work in a particular area.  Do we drive innovation in technology
> by starting problem-area-focused working groups and trying to
> build solutions?  Or do we wait until the industry has built some
> successful solutions in a particular space and become a forum
> for the industry to migrate multiple, non-interoperable solutions
> towards a standard?  What we need to optimize for along other
> axes might be quite different in those two cases.

In my mind, it will always need to be a case-by-case scenario.  Some
of the 3G groups are saying 'We need a solution to problem x, we
don't really care what it looks like as long as it works.'  We
have another situation in the instant messaging domain where there
are many non-interoperable, proprietary standards and now several
semi-standardized solutions looking to complete the standardization
process. =20

I don't think either is optimal nor sub-optimal, the IETF needs to
be flexible.

br,
John