A 100.000 foot perspective on "what is the problem"

[Natale, Robert C (Bob)]

Hi,

[Sorry for the delay in the list getting this response.  I had
inadvertently pasted the list address into the bcc: field of
my reply to Randy, rather than the cc: field, and the list
admin did not like that.  BobN]

Concerning what Randy Bush wrote on Mon, 16 Dec 2002 15:01:22 -0800:
rb> and, as pete points out, when it comes to cross-area architecture
rb> and gotcha review, there is a serious resource problem. to always
rb> do it early would require folk with all the cross-area talents
rb> (these are usually security, ops, and transport) to be in all
rb> bof/wgs, and there just ain't enough of wise/senior/... folk in
rb> each of those talent areas to go around.

Understood. To me that implies that either:

1. We need to throttle down the amount of work allowed
into the funnel (and possibly also remove some existing
work from the funnel); and/or

2. we need to find (a) new process ways to optimize
the use of those current senior cross-area resources
(see #1) and (b) ways of cultivating additional
such resources over time (to alleviate the need
for #1).

That is, if there is too much work for too few resources
*and you want to maintain a demanding quality level* then
you have to either reduce the workload and/or increase
the resources. We all know that from harsh experience in
other domains, I'm sure...and we all know where the "give"
is usually found in that dilemma ("we'll catch up on the
quality thing later" :-). Well, my assessment is that
we've been going down that road for a while now and both
our "customers" and our "competitors" are reacting in
rational ways to the pattern.

Cheers,
BobN