OPEN ISSUE: Standards Track

Keith Moore moore at cs.utk.edu
Fri May 23 10:15:27 CEST 2003


> The idea of requiring a threat analysis and deployment
> scenarios analysis is a pretty good way to raise the bar
> way up into the stratosphere so that no work gets done.
> Presumably you meant that this would come _after_
> the problem statement and definition, followed by the
> requirements analysis, all of which should (???) occur
> before anyone is allowed to mention a solution.
...
> I really don't think engineers work that way.
> I think iterative and parallel development is best,
> and testing interoperability all along the way.

I don't know of any other field of engineering that doesn't try to
comprehensively understand and define the problem before declaring something a
solution.  That's not to say that potential solutions are never sketched out,
but they're not treated as anything other than rough ideas.

If we're going to call ourselves an Engineering organization maybe we should
actually do Engineering rather than guesswork.

And I realize that many participants in IETF have problems thinking like
engineers. Maybe we should find a way to either teach IETF participants to
think like engineers or to recruit participants who do understand the
discipline of engineering.


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