18 months

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On søndag, januar 05, 2003 09:45:08 -0800 Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> 
wrote:

> Folks,
>
> Monday, December 23, 2002, 11:42:22 AM, you wrote:
> Joel> The assumption that long-winded working groups inevitably
>
> It would be great if we could design a process that was infinitely
> flexible and could adapt to every possible working group setting.
> However we are unlikely to achieve that.
>
> Therefore, if we argue for or against proposals based on individual
> examples or exceptions, we will make no progress.

Dave,

your statement as written seems to be that we should accept your perception 
of a pattern without question, and that counterexamples are uninteresting 
because they are exceptions or individual examples.

I would suggest that in the absence of verifiable data, detection of 
patterns is an exercise in theology, not engineering.

So I would suggest that when you claim a pattern, you also mention at least 
3 specific examples that you think fit the pattern.

We've been talking a lot about "success" and "failure" here, but rarely 
saying which projects we consider in each category - probably because we 
all know that not everyone agrees on the status of each project.

But unless we stop pussyfooting, I think we cannot engineer for reality.

                     Harald

> My own discussion tried to claim some *patterns*.  A pattern does not
> require correlation of 1.0.  It does not require that there be no
> exceptions.  Rather it looks for dominant behavior.  One might even call
> it a rough consensus pattern.
>
> My claim is that the *pattern* of IETF performance shows that excessive
> time highly correlates with poor productivity and utility.
>
> If we build a process that is tailored for the exception, we are likely to
> retain the current IETF productivity problems. However that is not the
> IETF folks seem to want. So the question is how to improve productivity
> without losing the essential core to our process.
>
> d/
> --
>  Dave <mailto:dhc at dcrocker.net>
>  Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
>  t +1.408.246.8253; f +1.408.850.1850
>
>