I'll add to what John wrote below that we did discuss the potential
for another layer of management between ADs and WGs during the
IESG retreat (and that was actually before Keith's message).
It's clear that ADs have discretion to use directorates or
technical advisors, but nobody felt that formalizing this
as an official two-level system would have much benefit. So I
guess we agreed with John.
Brian
John C Klensin wrote:
Keith,
This _is_ going to be a terse reply, since others have covered
much of what I would have. But the topics are complex. Three
observations...
(1) My observation about whining had more to do with the general
tone of many of these discussions, in this round and earlier,
rather than anything about what you may or may not have said
specifically. Please don't take that categorization personally
or, even generally, as more than a warning about S/N ratios and
ways to make progress (or the lack thereof).
(2) We have repeatedly tried variations on this theme. The
"area advisor" got that title because the secretariat couldn't
modify the relevant templates to include both "responsible AD"
(as we moved to two-AD areas with split, rather than shared,
responsibility) and the notion of "someone senior who keeps a
close eye on a WG, advising the chair and WG but reporting to
the AD". A different variation might have been called
"designated leadership developer/coach". I think these ideas
have worked well sometimes and not at all in others. The fact
that we have tried variations should not imply that we should
avoid trying another, but may call for some serious thought
about why the previous attempts have not always worked
effectively.
(3) I've commented earlier on my concerns about adding
intermediate layers of management or review and won't repeat
those remarks here.
john
--On Saturday, 30 April, 2005 01:40 -0400 Keith Moore
<moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> wrote:
wow...I keep wanting to make terse replies, but there never
seems to be a way to address the subject with a short answer.
I'm sorry you see these explanations as whining. I believe
that we have to recognize that part of our problem is how WGs
operate before we can be willing to solve that problem. So I
try to describe that problem in a way that people will
recognize it. Maybe people already realize that we have this
problem and I don't actually need to illustrate it.
As for solutions - I have been thinking about possible
solutions for several years. But I'm much better at protocol
engineering than I am at engineering management or social
structures, so I don't have much confidence in my ideas for
how to solve the problem.
Recently I've begun to suspect that a good answer to some of
these problems might involve a layer of management between
IESG and working groups - a set of people who had
responsibility to give some technical oversight to working
groups, monitor their progress, and keep the ADs up-to-date on
the state of things. I say "oversight" rather than
"direction" because "direction" would be too strong a term. I
don't see the supervisor (let's call him a supervisor for now)
...
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