Discipline of Internet Protocol Engineering

[Jari Arkko]

Keith Moore wrote:
>>However, I believe
>>there's a more fundamental reason why some charters are or may
>>need to be fuzzy. That reason has to do with the timing when
>>the IETF gets involved, or the scope of the problem. 
> 
> 
> Part of the problem may be that we often want the initial charter to map
> out the entire life cycle of the group.  often this is unrealistic, because
> we really don't understand what the group has to do.  I don't think we 
> should try to nail down details more than about eight months (say two 
> IETF meetings) in advance.  But if we don't have a good idea about what
> a WG is going to be doing over the next few months, with fairly concrete,
> realizable, measurable goals - something's wrong.

Agreed.

We could in addition require that groups produce something concrete
(like an approved document) in that 8 months. If we take in account
that the full protocol (or whatever) can't be done in this time,
this shows a need to produce intermediate deliveries. Often these
are requirements documents, though I'm not quite sure useful they
are. It might be more useful to produce roadmap or architecture
documents.

--Jari