18 months

[Dave Crocker]

Brian,

Thursday, December 12, 2002, 2:05:52 AM, you wrote:
Brian> I don't get how a rigid time limit will make WGs do things better.

Yes, that is a key question.  So here is a rambling attempt to respond:

Do working groups that take a very long time to produce anything do well
within the IETF? Do they eventually produce something useful? Does it
eventually become popular in the Internet. I think the answer is clearly no.
Working groups that go for a couple of years without being productive do not
tend to get productive later. They lose focus. They lose energy. They lose
participants. They lose market window. They make bloated, problematic
specifications.

This suggests rather strongly that the IETF is best for activities that are
more near-term. If an activity is not yet ready to do near-term work, the
IETF has demonstrated that it is a very poor venue.  Hence, such activities
should be pursued elsewhere, and come to the IETF only when they are ready
to do near-term work efficiently.

The IETF has been having difficulty producing charters that are sufficiently
crisp for easy guidance to achieve near-term productivity. ("Easy guidance"
means that it is relatively clear what is in scope and what is out, as well
as clear what the useful output from the working group should be.) We can
all wish that this were different, but folks who work on charters and who
review them are all bright, experienced and well-intentioned. Entreating
ourselves to 'do better' is not likely to produce better charters.

We are constantly seeing working group discussions that are energetic,
interesting and unproductive.  This strongly suggests a lack of focus among
the participants.  In particular, it suggests that participants are not
feeling a sense of urgency to produce something useful and they often are
not sharing a common sense of what that useful something should be.  Again,
we can all wish this were not so, but we do not yet have any other
suggestions for fixing this bit of entropy.

Deadlines provide focus... if they are enforced.  We have a great deal of
discussion, now, that suggests we merely need to enforce the milestones in a
charter.  Such a "change" sounds appealing.  The question is will it work?
Remember that we tend to produce charters that lack crispness -- often
including the milestones, and that we have an extremely varied pattern of
"enforcing" those milestones.

In the face of diversity, variability, uncertainty, etc., it is often
extremely helpful to find a simple, crystalizing rule that everyone can
understand and adjust to.  This is, of course, Procrustean.  The nastiness
of Procrustean rules is clear.  However, that does not mean they are
inappropriate.  It is remarkably Procrustean to require that everyone making
IETF standards speak and write English, if they are to be effective.  Yet we
have found it essential to productivity.

The idea of a universal time limit, for all IETF efforts is intended as just
such a simple, focusing rule.  The particular number that has been proposed
tries to allow enough time to fit into the pattern of IETF productivity, and
to be short enough to exclude activities (or terminate activities) that have
shown a pattern of non-productivity.

Since the idea of a rule to be productive in 18 months is too onerous, how
about a rule that says all working groups must undergo zero-based chartering
every 24 months?

That is, a working group ceases to exist at 24 months.

It may submit a new charter, and that new charter will be viewed on its own
merits, using current assessments of participant availability, likely
productivity, and market pressures -- the same as we do for any new working
group. The previous 2 years of history for the "old" working group would of
course be taken into account.

(Lest anyone think that the aggregate overhead of such a process would be
onerous, we should remember just how onerous it already is to have wasteful,
protracted working groups.)

d/
-- 
 Dave <mailto:dhc@dcrocker.net>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
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