Time required to write down "wisdom" (Re: "Adult supervision")

[Jeanette Hofmann]

On 12 May 2003 at 16:55, Thomas Narten wrote:

> > It seems that the 'process' has some how gotten twisted to disable the
> > quick publication of important documents.
> 
> This may true if the assumption is that the *process* is what caused
> the problems.
> 
> >From my perspective, the real issue often tends to be:
> 
> 1) Good documents don't pop out in the -00 version.
> 
> 2) Iteration is essential. Iteration means a small number of people
>    (e.g., 1-5) read the document, provide good feedback, and then a
>    new revision is produced.
> 
> 3) process is repeated at least a few more times, with a different set
>    of reviewers providing the review and feedback each time.
> 
> 4) Process terminates, because subsequent reviews don't uncover
>    significant issues and the reviewers think the document is good
>    enough to ship.
> 
> You can't rush a document (if you want it to be good). Indeed, when I
> write documents, I personally find that if I reread something I wrote
> a month earlier, I often find obvious things that need fixing. I often
> don't see these if I review the document a few days after last working
> on it. The point here is that good documents just don't happen on the
> first version and time is needed to properly review and iterate.
> 
> Where the "process" sometimes goes wrong is that the sequence of
> reviews and iterations haven't happened properly/optimally. Either not
> enough iterations, or too long between iterations.
> 
> IMO, there is a problem here that bears further examination. Getting
> good reviews and then subsequent revisions in a timely fashion is
> something I see too much of.
> 
> > I think that we, as an organization, do need to do better.
> 
> Yep. IMO, we should look hard at ways of ensuring that the needed
> iteration on revisions happens in a timely fashion. But not too
> timely, as that leads to documents being pushed forward before they
> are truly ready.

One of the few good things that came out of the ICANN reform process is the 
introduction of a policy development process, PDP. It is the attempt to define 
and standardize the steps and overall timeframe of decision making 
processes, as it were a finetuning of the milestones procedure. There are no 
practical experiences with the PDP yet. Moreover, ICANN is not exactly a 
good recommendation for best practice models, I know. Yet, perhaps it is 
worth a thought whether a similar model might improve the milestones 
function. 

Jeanette



> 
> Thomas