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Re: call for ideas: tail-heavy IETF process

2013-05-02 17:59:49
On 5/2/2013 3:25 PM, Jari Arkko wrote:
But the delay was really not my main concern. Primarily because I think other issues such 
as transparency to the working group or late surprises are more fundamental issues than 
mere timing. But also because I actually*do*  have some statistics that seem to indicate 
that, overall, the last phase still goes through pretty quickly. Look 
athttp://www.arkko.com/tools/lifecycle/wgdocs.html  and compare the WG, IESG, and RFC 
editor times in the first graph. The WG time dominates. (I said "seem to 
indicate" because the results are pretty dated and I'm not really sure how valid 
they are, but they match at least my intuitive experience.) Not saying delay reduction 
wouldn't be useful, the overall times are still very long, and the IETF last call - IESG 
time is still a significant component. Just that delay would not be my primary


Jari,

Very interesting set of graphs.  Thanks!


Doing very rough eyeballing of the "left side" averages against the "right side" averages -- that is, considering how things have changed over the last 10 years -- it looks like:

     Working groups were taking around 500 days and now take around 600.

     The IESG was taking around 200 days and now takes around 110.

The RFC then and now takes around 100 days (with lots of variation between the then and the now, of course.)

Considering the 'now' set of relationships among the phases, The IESG is adding about 20% on top of the working group, and the RFC Editor is adding another 20% on top of the working group. In other words, once a working group considers itself done, they are probably only around 70% done...

The total, today appears to be around 3 years to get a specification developed and published. That's for one document, not the set of them that might be needed to produce a useful service...

A basic question, then, is whether we think these absolute numbers and these proportions of time are reasonable and appropriate for the IETF to be/remain effective?

If we don't, what should reasonable numbers look like?


d/

--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net