Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> I think I kinda do see what Brian's point is.
...
As an organization of individuals developing protocol specifications -
that's who we are, and that's what we do - we don't even have a natural
way to interact with operators,
...
I think Brian is saying the same thing about economic/financial analysis
We do not need to conduct intricate analysis, nevermind economic analysis.
However we do need to have a basis for believing that the work we are doing
will actually get used. Anyone investing years of effort ought to have a
basis for believing not only that a document will get produced but that it
will result in implementations and that the implementations will get deployed
and that the deployments will get used.
Otherwise, we are spending aggregate millions of dollars per standard as an
academic exercise.
At base, this falls into the category of "market research". The fact that we
are engineers does not mean that we get pretend market issues are irrelevant.
Consider job hunting. Most people care about the nature of the work but they
also care about whether they will get paid. They assess a variety of factors,
to decide that a reliable paycheck will be forthcoming. That process of
assessment is a kind of business analysis. Even engineers do it.
This used to be well understood in the IETF. And as we turn out process
document after process document, we ought to consider how little we pay
attention to ones we have had around for a long time.
Consider IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures,
<http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2418.txt>:
2.1. Criteria for formation
When determining whether it is appropriate to create a working group,
the Area Director(s) and the IESG will consider several issues:
...
- What are the risks and urgency of the work, to determine the level
of effort required?
...
- Does a base of interested consumers (end-users) appear to exist
for the planned work? Consumer interest can be measured by
participation of end-users within the IETF process, as well as by
less direct means.
The rest of the list is pretty interesting, I think, but these two bullets
pertain to the current thread: A basis for assessing urgency and community
pull, to use the result.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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