Discipline of Internet Protocol Engineering

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On onsdag, juni 04, 2003 10:25:00 -0400 Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu> 
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.
>

Might part of the problem be that we're lousy at making plans, *apart* from 
the charter?

I don't think I've ever seen a working group chair come up with a 
document/message/webpage that said something like "OK, in order to achieve 
this milestone in December, here's what we're planning to do in June, July, 
August, September and November.... we didn't do what we were supposed to do 
in May, so that means September's going to have a time crunch....."

again, this is something we have no rule against, it's normal practice in 
other branches of engineering, but we just don't seem to be doing it....