On 10/20/2013 5:02 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
On 10/20/2013 3:54 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
The obvious risk if one separates WG management from review is that one
could easily get the situation where the manager, in working with the
WG, says that the document needs X, Y, and not Z. And then the reviewer
says "needs Z". And there are more extreme versions of this.
Currently, the ability for the managing AD to say "no, this won't pass
muster" is part of his management tool. If he is not the reviewer, he
seems to have lost an important tool. I hope I am missing something
that would make this sort of approach workable.
"Manager"?
Who's that?
ADs do not 'manage' working groups, and frankly neither do Chairs.
Yes, there's quite a lot of management activity done by both, but you've
used the term manager in a way that reflects classic hierarchical
authority models in typical organizations.
And that really isn't appropriate for the IETF, where we say that
working group consensus rules working group decision-making and after
that the IETF consensus rules.
The sort of thing you probably mean is that quality control processes
outside the working group produce concerns and recommendations that run
contrary to, or go beyond, what the working group has done. That's
fine, but that's not (necessarily) done by a "manager". And in spite of
giving ADs a unilateral authority to (temporarily) block progress, the
resolution of concerns is a negotiation, not further unilateral
decision-making by a higher-authority "manager".
The model that has ADs trying to be content experts, in addition to area
facilitators, is exactly the underlying problem here.
I'm not fond of the word "management" to describe the job either. The
role is Area _Director_, not Area Manager, but I do think working
group management is a fine name for the task performed, as long as it's
understood to be in line with "We reject kings, presidents, ...".
The AD *facilitates* the working groups and BoFs by being able to
provide and shuffle resources (mailing lists, webex, meeting rooms,
etc), by trying to find and keep appropriate WG chairs, and by working
with them through chartering, re-chartering, and the later stages of
document publication.
The AD *directs* the area by being able to encourage or discourage
new work (via BoFs and rechartering), to send proposals towards
particular working groups, to end working groups when they cease to
be productive, and to ballot on work in other areas being proposed
in a charter or recharter.
To the question of splitting the document reviews from the working
group "management" tasks: When I was an AD, I found the document
reviews to be very useful in figuring out what was going on in other
areas that might be related to working groups in the area I was
responsible for, and in calibrating expectations for documents to
come out of my area's working groups.
If the document review and working group management roles were
split, I don't know how the AD doing working group management
would maintain broader awareness to avoid too much overlap or
conflict between WGs, or to know what the relevant things to
look for are in a MIB document, requirements document, etc. that
their WGs are producing, before sending them to IETF LC. Certainly
they could find other ways to do this than reviewing every document
and sitting in the entire telechat though ...
--
Wes Eddy
MTI Systems