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?
seems pretty reasonable to me. from personal experience, the iesg and
rfced add useful value.
being in a many-year process of getting a technology through the
saussage machine, it's the wg that feels to me to be the most
inefficient part of the process. i attribute this to email not being
the best medium, and meetings being too short and too far between. but
that is purely subjective.
randy