working group commitment

Dave Crocker dhc at dcrocker.net
Sat Mar 22 21:09:27 CET 2003


Ted,
Friday, March 21, 2003, 8:11:15 AM, you wrote:
TH> I also think that it might continue the issue that it will be
TH> difficult to identify who in a working group has committed to
TH> taking on a particular set of work.

I was confused about this topic during the meeting, and remain so.  It
is simply not clear to me how this is a problem, rather than an
indicator of a problem.

Let's take the simple perspective:

   A working group has an active set of productive participants.
   vs.
   A working group does NOT have an active set of productive
   participants.

In the former case, you do not need an accounting system for
"commitment" because the work is getting done.

In the latter case, an accounting system won't help because the
working group lacks critical mass of productive workers.

So, having folks someone put themselves on some list does not seem
like there is much of a win, unless there are incentives and penalties
that are clear and provide meaningful leverage.

>From the response to my question about all this, at the meeting, the
primary need that I heard was predictability of work, due to
dependency by other groups.

Clearly such dependencies are important and fragile.  But will
"commitments" really do anything to fix them?  For that matter, we
might want, instead, to worry about basing one set of work on the
simultaneous work of another.

My rule in projects is that critical dependencies on outside forces
vastly magnify risks. As distasteful as this suggestion might be, the
right solution is to avoid them.

If you cannot avoid them, the risk does not get lower by virtue of
having someone signed up in "commitment".  It just means that you have
a particular person you can blame when there is failure.

Unfortunately, that does not reverse the failure.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>



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