Killing old/slow groups - transition thinking

[john.loughney@nokia.com]

John,

> One of the places where this leads, I think, is to holding ADs
> responsible, at the "important criteria for the Nomcom" level,
> for having too many WGs that have gotten behind schedule or that
> are, to use your terminology, undisciplined.  From at least one
> perspective, each of the problems and causes you mention above
> can be described as "failure to manage effectively" on the part
> of the relevant AD.   The same thing could be said for missed
> benchmarks.  WG (or Chair) inexperience, charter divergence, and
> general sloppiness and lack of discipline are, in principle, all
> things that we expect ADs to manage, whether by education and
> leadership, "firing" chairs or WGs, reorganizing, or other means.

I think that having better management is a goal, and could help
the process.  The question is, how to get better management.
=20
> But suppose, as I hypothesized in my long response to PACT, that
> failure of ADs to handle these sorts of things on a more timely
> and effective basis is due primarily to serious overload,
> overload that extends all across the IESG.  In that case,
> swapping one overloaded AD who isn't effectively managing and
> developing leadership (because of that overload) out and
> replacing him or her with another one isn't going to help.  It
> may even make things worse because the replacement will have to
> deal with the read-in process as well as the previous workload.

This I agree with, with the caviat that better transparency may
help the IETF at large determine if there is a real problem with
a specific IESG member. I don't want a witch-hunt, I just think
that someone can be talented in his/her domain but not be
right for the IESG.

> The IESG has observably not figured out how to reduce the load
> to some reasonable level of IESG effectiveness... presumably
> because they are convinced that, on a case by case basis, we
> have been  telling them that we don't want them to: I don't
> think I have ever seen someone stand up and say "while I think
> this WG that I'm trying to start is important, there are too
> many WGs already, so maybe we should let it go".

So, one thing that I think is odd is that the IESG does not actively
engage WG chairs and document authors during IESG review.  Quite often,
mails are not directly sent to the doc authors, but sent to the WG
chairs.  During the WG chartering process, I thought that I would
be subjected to a list of questions, possible phone conferences
where I would have to defend the WG charter, etc.  Also, I expected
more input to the WG forming process, since, collectively, the IESG
has a great amount of experience when compared to mine.  I am not=20
convinced that there are not some small procedural issues that are=20
causing a bulk of the current problems (i.e. - some small changes
may go a long way, IMO). What I would not like to
see radical changes for the sake of changes.

> And that, of course, is what leads to these draconian
> automatic-limit suggestions, whether they be fixed (short)
> maximum durations for WGs, or fixed (low) ceilings on the number
> of WGs, or automatic cancellation of WGs who miss benchmarks.
> At least for me, each has some appeal, but, as I indicated in
> that long note two weeks ago, we had best be careful what we
> wish for.

I agree completely.  What we need to realize is that the more=20
work we take on, the less resources we will have for the rest.

br,
John L.