Thomas,
When I think of successful WGs, they have a number of things going for
them, that go beyond the charter. They include:
1) Having a shared view/understanding of the problem and the general
outline of a solution. ...
2) Building/having a "team", that serves as the critical mass and
"core competency" ...
a) project manager ...
b) good editors, ...
c) someone who follows the mailing list in real time and "manages"
discussion by closing off ratholes...
d) someone who is familiar enough with basic internet architecture
(and what other WGs are doing) to prevent the WG from making
decisions that are unlikely to be well-received by folk outside
the WG...
e) quality reviewers
f) A real push from a "customer" of the work...
I like your list. It also happens to be in line with the contents of (I think
Section 2) of the Working Group Guidelines RFC, although there are bits that
go beyond it nicely.
Although they often are essential, reviewers are not required 100% of the
time. Working groups often have sufficient expertise and focus, as well as
other forms of feedback, to get away without formal review. However many
working groups suffer from lack of such sanity checking early in their
efforts.
The benefit of having an architecture expert is both essential and dangerous.
Essential for the reasons you cite, as well as to improve the likelihood of
developing a solution that will work long-term and in large-scale. Dangerous
because it has the potential to insert a block -- the reviewer -- who is too
abstracted from the actual demands of the topic, thereby missing the adequacy
of a proffered solution.
Item c is probably the most seriously missing component from problematic
working groups. Given the diversity of current participation, list
discussions DO need to be managed, in order to assure some assemblance of
focus and (forward) progress.
Thus, a good charter is _necessary_ (usually), but by no means
sufficient by any means.
right.
d/
---
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
+1.408.246.8253
dcrocker a t ...
WE'VE MOVED to: www.bbiw.net
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