It seems to me that the fundamental problem is that most of the meeting has
not read most of the drafts let alone the latest version under discussion.
I think that's a symptom; a more fundamental problem is that WGs are trying to
do too many things at once.
I've lost track of how many times I've seen a WG
a) take valuable meeting time to have a presentation about a draft that is only
peripherally related to the WG's current task
b) get a show of hands "how many people think this draft should be a WG work
item?"
c) accept the draft as a WG work item without any discussion of whether doing
so will affect the WG's ability to get other work done, or the WG's ability to
give adequate attention to the work already accepted
Now there are certainly cases in which a WG needs to generate lots of documents
in order to fulfill its mission. But to the extent that new work items are
identified in the manner described above, it probably indicates a lack of
planning. It should be possible to identify early on which topics need to be
addressed by WG documents and which ones are either peripheral to the WG's
mission or need to wait until the primary deliverables are completed. The
initial charter is generally too early to do this, but it would be reasonable
for such a work plan to be one of the first deliverables of the initial
charter. Once that work plan is established, WGs need to push back on taking
on additional work. And the push back probably needs to come from the chairs,
or if the chairs won't do it, the ADs.
Keith
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