ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Is this an elephant? [Was: call for ideas: tail-heavy IETFprocess]

2013-05-17 13:12:45
On 5/17/2013 10:28 AM, t.p. wrote:
The idea that working groups should be required to issue periodic
project progress reports seems strikingly reasonable and useful.

Some WG Chairs already do this and I find it most helpful.  Even at the
most basic level, of what documents have changed status in the past
month and what have not, this provides a valuable measure of progress,
or lack thereof.


That's good, but it highlights a point I also noticed in the examples we were given for INT: There's a basic difference between activity and progress.

Except for in-depth, detailed tracking situations, I think that reporting 'activity' is actually noise.

Progress is about decisions and output, not about movement and input.

Since the goal of the kind of reporting being discussed here is to inform the 'community' it needs to be very concise and semantic: It needs to talk about the accomplishments that have /completed/ things. A decision finishes a question. Agreement on the text of a section finishes that part of a document.

Iterating on a document and holding meetings are activity that might or might not contain the kernel of progress.

For the current discussion, we need to hear about that kernel, IMO. Not the rest.

d/


--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>