Comments on the Problem Statement draft: Document structure

Charlie Perkins charliep at iprg.nokia.com
Mon Oct 6 17:44:45 CEST 2003


Hello folks,

I have some comments on the draft.  I'll break it down into
three different e-mail messages, because otherwise I am
afraid that many points might be lost.

I believe that the document structure causes the
document to lose effectiveness.  It can be improved by
some pretty basic reorganization:

- The "Changes" sections should be moved into an
   appendix (or multiple appendices)

- The "Acknowledgement" section (currently 1.4) should
   be moved to be the last section before the normative
   references.

- In Section (2), the first part of the section should
   itemize the list of root causes, e.g.:
   = Unclear Mission
   = Poor Use of Effective Engineering Practice
   = Standards Process Abuse
   = Workload exceeds available staffing levels
   = Unsuitable Management Structure
   = Poor WG dynamics
   = Inadequate Staff Preparation

This text should be placed before section 2.1.

I know that the IETF participants are "Staff", because
I have two IETF t-shirts that say so.  Also I would
strongly encourage _short_ formulations for the "root
causes", because long rambling formulations just don't
get the point across anywhere near as well.

A statement is made that the "Unclear Mission" root
cause is the "fundamental" cause.  I don't believe it.
I think it's much more a case of arbitrary procedures
applied selectively according to circumstance and
personal preference.  When I discuss with people at
the IETF, I may often hear a point of view that I don't
agree with.  But I rarely would characterize it as not
having a clue about mission.  Without formulating a
proposed "mission statement" to try to prove my
point, I would at least like to strongly suggest that the
characterization in section 2., preceding section 2.1,
is wrong.  If I had to pick out a more fundamental
root cause, it would be "Unsuitable Management
Structure", at least from the current formulation for
the set of root causes.

Thus, I would suggest demoting section 2.2 to be placed
_much_ later in section 2.

More in another e-mail coming shortly.

Regards,
Charlie P.






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