So, I'm not an ART AD ...
On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 3:31 PM, Jari Arkko
<jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> wrote:
John,
This answer is my impression of the situation, informed by a
brief discussion with the IESG. But I’m speaking only for
myself, and in any case there is more to this topic. Other
ADs may send additional thoughts. ART ADs in particular
may have views about how well the structure works for them…
There’s a couple of aspects to the ART area situation. Whether
additional coordination among three (vs. two) ADs is working
out. Whether the workload is appropriate for three (vs. four or
two) ADs. And so on. My perception is that the new system
is working relatively well, but given that people have been
in their new roles for only some time, it may be too early
to draw those conclusions. And the DISPATCH/APPSAWG
merge is brand new in this meeting, so it will take some
time to gather experience about that as well.
It's probably too early to tell whether three ADs is a good plan or a bad
plan, based on experience.
RTG was replacing a three-term AD with two first-term ADs, and at least in
TSV, the first year is a lot of "what the heck is going on THERE???", so
things would likely be easier to analyze next year. ART was combining two
existing areas with a fair amount of cultural difference as they moved to
three ADs, so it's likely hard to figure out whether something change
because of the area combination, or because ART has three ADs. Again,
please check back next year.
We will continue to track this and other workings of the
IESG and take action as needed.
One aspect that the whole IESG is already quite happy about
was that we’re all quite pleased with our increased ability to
be flexible as far as AD responsibilities, shepherding WGs
out-of-area and being able to increase or decrease personnel
in an area as needs arise. We do want to make long-term
changes, but we see that the the first step is maintaining the
flexibility to be able to adapt to changes in workload and
*not* making too many concrete long-term plans.
Also, the IESG has internally had a lot of discussion about
finding ways to transform AD role so that it can be done while
also having significant day job responsibilities. This would
increase the pool of potential AD candidates and would place
IETF management work closer to daily life in networking.
This has been a difficult thing for us to find solutions to,
although I would observe that there are several ADs who
are succeeding in such sharing of responsibilities. We continue
to try to find solutions, particularly around further decentralising
the IETF organisations. However, the areas are quite
different in how they work, so solutions in this space have
traditionally been different for different ADs. For instance,
the need and practices around the use of review directorates
differ wildly.
It is my opinion that if there are changes in time commitments required for
any specific AD role, this will likely be the result of something the ADs
in that area did, not something the IESG as a whole did.
Another topic that the IESG has had internal discussions
about is whether we could make the group radically smaller,
making internal coordination more efficient and perhaps
as a side effect forcing some tasks out of the IESG.
Before the Cancun retreat (when we were beginning to talk about
smallerizing), we asked Harald to talk with us on an informal telechat
about his experience with structural changes, and especially about the
long-expired
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-iesg-alvestrand-twolevel-00.txt.
Because we had a passionate advocate for a significantly smaller IESG on
the IESG, I had hopes that we would look at something like that proposal
(and after Harald described the obstacles that the proposal encountered, I
had thoughts about changes that might have made it workable).
There was enough tension between the idea of a significantly smaller IESG
and the idea of significant time commitment reduction for all AD positions
that we couldn't make progress in either direction.
The
ADs had wildly different perspectives into this, but it is
no longer a direction that we’re considering. I’d say that
the majority of the ADs are more focused on current
or slightly smaller IESG size, but with less workload
per person.
In short, we’ve done some work in this space but also
a lot of work remains. One additional aspect that we have
not considered yet is whether the current flexible operating
model ends up impacting job descriptions for the nomcom,
perhaps asking for more generalists than people with deep
expertise in the specific working groups they’d end up
managing.
Some specifics:
That evaluation and plan is particularly important
to those of us who believe that, long-term, areas with three or
more ADs tend to be too complex to follow and reduce the
possibility for accountability.
Some of us wanted to understand better your thinking here,
John. Why do you believe that three ADs implies those things?
Is it the additional coordination that you envision?
Jari