WG Quality Processes WG

[Spencer Dawkins]

Hi, Scott,

We had already started a discussion this morning about
how we organize to do "small chunks of work". It seems
to me that we are headed toward small process changes,
as opposed to "feed the IESG to pigs and start over",
so the "small chunks of work" discussion seems applicable
to process work as well.

Margaret told me that she'd gotten approval for a BoF
in 15 minutes, on one occasion. My limited experience 
has been that it takes me longer than that to get approval 
for a BoF, and about two IETF meeting intervals to charter
a working group after a BoF is proposed.

I'm also thinking that if the IESG has to choose between
considering BoF requests for process work and BoF
requests for protocol work, the protocol work will get
the nod.

If you're really good at sliding WG creation requests
through, please stay engaged. If I'm going to be involved,
I'm concerned about the inertia I've experienced when
spinning WGs up from scratch, and expect that process
WGs would take more time, rather than less.

Spencer

p.s. I'm not complaining about the amount of inertia - I work
in TSV, and we tend to NOT "go crazy" and redo TCP every
year, for good reasons. I'm just not sure the amount of
inertia I've experienced will help us improve our processes
before IETF 60 (to pick a date).

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Margaret Wasserman" <mrw at windriver.com>
To: "Scott W Brim" <swb at employees.org>
Cc: <problem-statement at alvestrand.no>
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 12:48 PM
Subject: Re: WG Quality Processes WG


> 
> Hi Scott,
> 
> At 12:23 PM 6/2/2003 -0400, Scott W Brim wrote:
> >I'm just reluctant to make it a WG without an immutable time-to-live,
> >less than a year.  I want them to take on just one or two possible
> >changes at a time.  A change which is so major that it takes longer
> >should be shepherded by the IESG (at this group's instigation?).  It can
> >be recreated (not just rechartered) every time.  We have a precedent,
> >the NomCom.  I don't want the group to get stuck in its ways.
> 
> I understand and share your concerns about establishing
> an ongoing process bureaucracy...
> 
> However, I'm not sure what, exactly, you are proposing as
> an alternative.  Everyone seems to believe that there is
> a serious problem with the quality, timeliness and predictability
> of WG output.  But, how do we initiate an effort to improve in
> this area?
> 
> We have the strange gap between the problem-statement group
> and the efforts to make actual improvements in the IETF...
> 
> The problem-statement group isn't supposed to talk about
> specific solutions.  So, it is virtually impossible for us
> to start efforts that are focused on accomplishing
> particular solutions...  Basically, all we can do is to
> encourage the creation of groups (or efforts of any kind)
> that _will_ (finally!) focus on solutions.
> 
> Margaret