Killing old/slow groups - transition thinking

Marshall Rose mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us
Tue, 10 Dec 2002 17:20:45 -0800


> > Now, I believe that if the IESG is not keeping up, we (the rank and
> > file) should expect them to throttle back the IETF,
> 
> the problem with this is that everyone thinks the ietf needs to say
> "no" more often.  but just as long as it is to someone else's work.
> 
> e.g., v6 transition, zeroconf, and jabber are a load and will be
> more so.  do you, margaret, and marshall wanna talk about which we
> should shed?  :-)

sure, but let's start with the dead weight first.  this is part of the mess, of
course, a non-trivial number of existing WGs are problematic...


> one of the lessons i have learned on the internet is distributing
> the load is a major key to scaling and dealing with load.  i
> suspect one possible approach to the serious problem of getting all
> this work done is to push the problems of rigor and quality back to
> the wgs so they produce product that requires less time to process.

a false dichotomy.  quality is a process and it starts at the bof and chartering
process. the more energy that gets directed there, then it's likely that less
energy is needed later on...


> and, as i am wondering about increasing the load on wgs, you may
> get a hint as to why i keep asking marshall about his obsession
> with milestones.  there may be a tradeoff here, and i am actually
> trying to understand the space.

you can not manage what you do not measure. some folks prefer to measure
intuitively, others prefer more explicit measurements. it is hard to measure
quality (hence the intuition), but WGs that repeatedly can't keep to milestones
have a serious problem, and it doesn't take a lot of domain-specific skill to
figure that out...

/mtr