Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
I would never suggest adopting a 4-year project schedule, but would suggest a number of simple project management techniques and goals: - As part of WG chair training, train WG chairs in basic project management techniques and indicate that driving progress is an important role. - For large WGs, encourage use of WG secretaries to track and encourage progress. If a WG is behind, the ADs might want to ask why a WG is not using this mechanism. - Avoid massive number of parallel efforts in working groups. Instead, focus on a small number of drafts and get them out in less than a year from draft-ietf-*-00. (They might start as draft-personal- if they are exploratory.) Excessive parallelism leads to 12 5-minute presentations in IETF meetings where nobody except the authors understands the open issues and everybody else is reading email. Also, if there 30 drafts under some form of consideration, the number of people that focus on any one draft is tiny, making real mailing-list discussions difficult. - Have tools that remind the working group of upcoming deadlines, i.e., drafts that are supposed to be finished (ready for WGLC) within the next IETF cycle. - Encourage authors to meet those deadlines and have mechanisms in place that encourage meeting deadlines (such as getting preferred airtime or put-back-at-end-of-queue). - Track all WGLCs in the I-D tracker. - Formally assign early reviewers (say, after -01) within the working group; we do this for conference papers all the time, with deadlines and automated reminders. (I maintain the EDAS tool set for this.) Right now, we sometimes ask for shows-of-hand, but there is usually limited follow-up. - For larger groups, consider a working group architecture call: a period of discussion where attention is focused on one draft, with the intent of resolving any architectural and big-picture issues, but not focusing on issues of formatting or other mechanical details. The WGLC is then for making sure that the draft is ready to ship. The working group would be encouraged to read the mid-call draft ahead of the period and all other draft discussion would be discouraged. - Provide an issue tracker for -01+ drafts, integrated with the I-D tracker. - For status overviews at WG meetings, provide time-in-service for all drafts, compare with charter deadline and indicate a list of priority drafts that should receive most of the WG attention. Henning on both Henning's remarks and one of Brian's slides. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
At 10:05 04/08/2005, Henning Schulzrinne wrote: I would never suggest adopting a 4-year project schedule, but would suggest a number of simple project management techniques and goals: - As part of WG chair training, train WG chairs in basic project management techniques and indicate that driving progress is an important role. I doubt that this is going to solve anything. All basic project management techniques assume that a project has a deadline and that the people working on it have some incentive to get the work done. This is not the case for ID's: we continue working on them until there is rough consensus, no matter how long it takes. The authors are volunteers, if other activities pop up and work on the ID has to be postponed, there is nothing the WG chair can do. The real question is: how can we set realistic deadlines and get commitment from people to get the work done by the deadline, even if they are interrupted. Only when we have answered this question, it makes sense to start looking at tools to support this process. - Avoid massive number of parallel efforts in working groups. Instead, focus on a small number of drafts and get them out in less than a year from draft-ietf-*-00. (They might start as draft-personal- if they are exploratory.) This is another result of doing work with volunteers. If somebody is interested in a topic but not in another, then there is nothing that can stop him from working on the first topic, even if it might be beneficial for overall progress to finish the topic first. Henk -- Henk Uijterwaal Email: henk.uijterwaal(at)ripe.net RIPE Network Coordination Centre http://www.amsterdamned.org/~henk P.O.Box 10096 Singel 258 Phone: +31.20.5354414 1001 EB Amsterdam 1016 AB Amsterdam Fax: +31.20.5354445 The NetherlandsThe NetherlandsMobile: +31.6.55861746 -- Look here junior, don't you be so happy. And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad. (Tom Verlaine) ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
I doubt that this is going to solve anything. All basic project management techniques assume that a project has a deadline and that the people working We do have deadlines: charters, and external customers (implementors, other SDOs). on it have some incentive to get the work done. This is not the case for ID's: we continue working on them until there is rough consensus, no matter how long it takes. The authors are volunteers, if other activities pop up and work on the ID has to be postponed, there is nothing the WG chair can do. This is not quite true: authors are not volunteers in the normal soup-kitchen-volunteer sense. In most cases, authors are paid by their companies to do the work. This is not a hobby for most contributors. Even more classical volunteer organizations, like IEEE (the non-standards-part) and ACM, set deadlines and have mechanisms to deal with volunteers (true volunteers in that case) that can no longer perform. For example, journals routinely drop editors that don't perform their (unpaid, volunteer) duties. This is another result of doing work with volunteers. If somebody is interested in a topic but not in another, then there is nothing that can stop him from working on the first topic, even if it might be beneficial for overall progress to finish the topic first. Part of managing for success in any volunteer organization is to channel volunteer energy. Henning ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
Hi, ext Henk Uijterwaal wrote: At 10:05 04/08/2005, Henning Schulzrinne wrote: I would never suggest adopting a 4-year project schedule, but would suggest a number of simple project management techniques and goals: - As part of WG chair training, train WG chairs in basic project management techniques and indicate that driving progress is an important role. I doubt that this is going to solve anything. All basic project management techniques assume that a project has a deadline and that the people working on it have some incentive to get the work done. This is not the case for ID's: we continue working on them until there is rough consensus, no matter how long it takes. The authors are volunteers, if other activities pop up and work on the ID has to be postponed, there is nothing the WG chair can do. I hope you're not saying I-Ds have no deadlines. Sorry, but they do. Sure we're a voluntary organization, and technical quality is the first order of priority. But that does *not* mean that it is OK to work on a particular draft only six weeks per year (around the f2f meetings), or that it's OK to have an author disappear for six months, or that each and every crazy idea sent to the mailing list needs to be incorporated in late stages of the work, resulting in constant feature creep. Voluntary does not prohibit an incentives system, nor does it disallow project managers (the WG chairs) equipped with carrots and sticks. The real question is: how can we set realistic deadlines and get commitment from people to get the work done by the deadline, even if they are interrupted. By using the tools and conventions for WGs that Henning was proposing. Only when we have answered this question, it makes sense to start looking at tools to support this process. - Avoid massive number of parallel efforts in working groups. Instead, focus on a small number of drafts and get them out in less than a year from draft-ietf-*-00. (They might start as draft-personal- if they are exploratory.) This is another result of doing work with volunteers. If somebody is interested in a topic but not in another, then there is nothing that can stop him from working on the first topic, even if it might be beneficial for overall progress to finish the topic first. I think there is a misconception here about what volunteer means. I've worked in other voluntary organizations, and let me tell you, if you're a junior basketball coach but don't show up for practice, or decide to coach tennis unannounced for the next few months, you get replaced pretty quickly. Cheers, Aki Henk -- Henk Uijterwaal Email: henk.uijterwaal(at)ripe.net RIPE Network Coordination Centre http://www.amsterdamned.org/~henk P.O.Box 10096 Singel 258 Phone: +31.20.5354414 1001 EB Amsterdam 1016 AB Amsterdam Fax: +31.20.5354445 The NetherlandsThe NetherlandsMobile: +31.6.55861746 -- Look here junior, don't you be so happy. And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad. (Tom Verlaine) ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
At 11:07 04/08/2005, Henning Schulzrinne wrote: I doubt that this is going to solve anything. All basic project management techniques assume that a project has a deadline and that the people working We do have deadlines: charters, and external customers (implementors, other SDOs). I haven't counted the number of times were deadlines were missed this week alone with no consequences. For example, in a WG I attended this morning, the chair asked a person about a document he promised to write. The person answered that he'd do this in the next month. The chair replied that he said that last time as well. Some laughter followed, but that was the end of it. This is not quite true: authors are not volunteers in the normal soup-kitchen-volunteer sense. In most cases, authors are paid by their companies to do the work. I agree. But companies change priorities and with that the time people can spend on ID's. In this case, there is little we can do. I can see a solution (have get commitment from employers before assigning work to a person) but this will require a major change in the basic way we work. For example, journals routinely drop editors that don't perform their (unpaid, volunteer) duties. Yes, but I rarely see this happen in the IETF. Henk -- Henk Uijterwaal Email: henk.uijterwaal(at)ripe.net RIPE Network Coordination Centre http://www.amsterdamned.org/~henk P.O.Box 10096 Singel 258 Phone: +31.20.5354414 1001 EB Amsterdam 1016 AB Amsterdam Fax: +31.20.5354445 The NetherlandsThe NetherlandsMobile: +31.6.55861746 -- Look here junior, don't you be so happy. And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad. (Tom Verlaine) ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
I haven't counted the number of times were deadlines were missed this week alone with no consequences. For example, in a WG I attended this morning, the chair asked a person about a document he promised to write. The person answered that he'd do this in the next month. The chair replied that he said that last time as well. Some laughter followed, but that was the end of it. I would consider this a problem (cultural and otherwise), not a desirable state of affairs. If you mean that this requires more than just adding tools, I agree. I tend to believe the old saw that we manage what we measure. Currently, we have a creeping bias of low expectations and no good way to measure if things are getting worse or better. In volunteer organizations, organizations that don't ask anything of their members tend to get what they ask for. (There have been interesting economics papers on why mainstream, low-commitment churches in the West have had difficulties keeping members. But I digress.) I agree. But companies change priorities and with that the time people can spend on ID's. In this case, there is little we can do. In extremis, WG chairs can re-assign the work to some other party or parties. If no other party is interested in doing the work, the draft must not be all that important after all. Forcing a do-or-die decision avoids wasting time of all parties concerned. I suspect that this will also trigger a discussion between employer and employee which will magically make time available. I can see a solution (have get commitment from employers before assigning work to a person) but this will require a major change in the basic way we work. I don't see exported commitments as useful since they won't be enforceable unless you add a performance bond. No, I'm not currently suggesting performance bonds... Yes, but I rarely see this happen in the IETF. Maybe that's a bug, not a feature. It is currently difficult to pull the plug since the tardy author can easily say all other documents are late, why pick on me?. As a meta comment, saying that culture cannot change is the first and most obvious sign of a dying organization. I'm not claiming that you're claiming immutability, but I do hear variations on this in various remarks. Henning ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
On Thu, 4 Aug 2005, Henk Uijterwaal wrote: This is another result of doing work with volunteers. If somebody is interested in a topic but not in another, then there is nothing that can stop him from working on the first topic, even if it might be beneficial for overall progress to finish the topic first. Well, at least there is a mitigation factor (in theory). Set the maximum amount of documents that can be worked in parallel. If folks want their own document added as a WG document, they'll have to work on the existing documents out of the door first. (Obviously, this is a tool WG chairs can already use; I'd certainly be interested if the model has been executed successfully or unsuccessfully.) This also requires that documents with ineffective editors get raplaced reasonably quickly so there's always progress going on (and the proposers of new work can't say, but the existing ones aren't going anywhere [because the editor isn't doing the job]). -- Pekka Savola You each name yourselves king, yet the Netcore Oykingdom bleeds. Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
on 2005-08-04 10:05 Henning Schulzrinne said the following: I would never suggest adopting a 4-year project schedule, but would suggest a number of simple project management techniques and goals: ... - Have tools that remind the working group of upcoming deadlines, i.e., drafts that are supposed to be finished (ready for WGLC) within the next IETF cycle. I'm already planning to add something like this to the WG status pages, as part of providing some management tools for the chairs. I have some code in place, but I'm not ready to release anything yet. Hopefully before IETF-64, though. ... - Provide an issue tracker for -01+ drafts, integrated with the I-D tracker. I'm considering as part of the tools work setting up an issue tracker for each WG as part of the WG status page. It will be closely integrated with the WG mailing list. It should also be able to do some integration with the I-D tracker, although it's not immediately obvious to me exactly what kind of integration with the I-D tracker would be beneficial here. Could you expand on this? Henrik ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
the I-D tracker, although it's not immediately obvious to me exactly what kind of integration with the I-D tracker would be beneficial here. Could you expand on this? Not much linkage: any I-D automatically has an issue tracker associated with it and there is a link from the I-D tracker to the issue tracker screen. I would also find a quick summary statistic useful, akin to some of the sourceforge-like pages: draft-ietf-fubar-67.txt 17 open issues draft-ietf-barfu-17.txt no issues where the 17 open issues text links to the issue tracker. (No issues means that nobody has posted any.) ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
- Provide an issue tracker for -01+ drafts, integrated with the I-D tracker. I'm considering as part of the tools work setting up an issue tracker for each WG as part of the WG status page. It will be closely integrated with the WG mailing list. That would be excellent. When introducing issue trackers, it is essential to consider how things are archived, and the mail list archives are our archives. Having a tracker system generally available and integrated with the WG mailing lists would give us a consistent way of working and archiving. /L-E ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: project management (from Town Hall meeting)
on 2005-08-04 14:59 Henning Schulzrinne said the following: the I-D tracker, although it's not immediately obvious to me exactly what kind of integration with the I-D tracker would be beneficial here. Could you expand on this? Not much linkage: any I-D automatically has an issue tracker associated with it and there is a link from the I-D tracker to the issue tracker screen. I would also find a quick summary statistic useful, akin to some of the sourceforge-like pages: draft-ietf-fubar-67.txt 17 open issues draft-ietf-barfu-17.txt no issues where the 17 open issues text links to the issue tracker. (No issues means that nobody has posted any.) Ah, right. This makes sense to me, and should be easy to put in place also with the issue trackers not being implemented as part of the I-D tracker. Henrik ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
project management (from Town Hall meeting)
Title: project management (from Town Hall meeting) I didn't want to hold up everyone's dinner, so I joined the discussion list in order to comment on both Henning's remarks and one of Brian's slides. The slide said something like we are good at designing pieces but not at the big complex architecture issues; and Henning talked about using project management techniques. I work in several SDOs, in particular one mentioned in another one of Brian's slides (ITU SG13 - sorry for those liaisons for which I am responsible). In the ITU everything is planned in 4-year working periods, and questions (similar to our WGs) are opened according to an overall plan, rather than because of participant interest. The questions spend a great deal of time liaising with each to ensure no duplication of effort or doing someone else's job, and all draft editing is done on-line with participants voting on every line. Perhaps for this reason the ITU is really good at the architecture issues, and come up with good functional descriptions of complex systems, and have invented various formal languages and tools to faciliate analysis and design of such systems. On the other hand the ITU seems to be less good at the actual protocol design (compare ATM with MPLS or H.323 with SIP). My feeling is that we need both sorts of organization. We don't want to turn the IETF into another ITU, but we certainly could learn from the ITU (in certain cases it can now produce finished documents faster than the IETF), to exploit its work where applicable, and to interact with it. So let's keep working in an informal atmosphere, being driven by participant interest, and leave the suits and project management to those SDOs where it is part of the culture. Y(J)S ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
