On 9/25/14 7:13 PM, Eric Burger wrote:
Interesting. From 1998 on it looks like we go from 10% of ID’s
becoming RFCs to 5%. A combination of having a typical RFC being
published after draft-15, as well as a ton of -00’s that go nowhere,
perhaps?
Well, we don't know what the lag time was, or how that may have
changed during that period (but we can guess!). I found problem
statements by doing a repository search, which means that I only
counted one instance rather than having a per-revision-based count.
Even so, counting only one revision[*], the number of "problem
statement" drafts grew very quickly in the mid-aughties, a time when
the total number of submissions appears to have been relatively stable.
Anyway, the total numbers are small but to the extent that we
no longer seem to be able to undertake new work without a "problem
statement" I'd suspect that this may be contributing to process
delays. Also, I have a broader problem with "problem statements"
in that 1) I think a charter should be relatively complete to start
with, and 2) often problem statements represent something that
someone thinks would be interesting to work on rather than a
technically mature idea that would otherwise satisfy what used
to be some of our criteria for taking on new work - basically, certainty
that the people involved can actually solve the problem being laid
out and have some concrete, workable ideas about how to do so. I think
it's not only our slowness to complete documents that suggests that we
may be taking on some less productive aspects of other standards
bodies, but increased process ossification (problem statement->
use-cases->requirements->gap-analysis->architecture->maybe-one-day-
we'll-publish-a-protocol-eventually-perhaps) as well.
Melinda
[*] the exception to the one-revision count was when an individual
submission was resubmitted as a working group draft.
This is a count, by year, of the number of drafts which were submitted
and which contained the phrase "problem statement" in their title:
year # of problem statement drafts
1997 2
1998 1
1999 0
2000 1
2001 5
2002 10
2003 9
2004 8
2005 15
2006 36
2007 28
2008 32
2009 23
2010 29
2011 32
2012 25
2013 34
2014 40