Subject: project management (from Town Hall meeting)

From: "Yaakov Stein" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 21:30:55 +0200

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

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 04:05:35 -0400

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

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From: Henk Uijterwaal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 10:49:14 +0200

At 10:05 04/08/2005, Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
>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.

>from draft-ietf-*-00. (They might start as draft-personal- if they are 

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

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 05:07:49 -0400

> techniques assume that a project has a deadline and that the people working

We do have deadlines: charters, and external customers (implementors, 
other SDOs).

> and work on the ID has to be postponed, there is nothing the WG chair can

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.

> beneficial for overall progress to finish the topic first.

Part of managing for success in any "volunteer" organization is to 
channel volunteer energy.

Henning

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From: Aki Niemi <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 12:11:49 +0300

Hi,

> and work on the ID has to be postponed, there is nothing the WG chair can

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.

> from people to get the work done by the deadline, even if they are

By using the tools and conventions for WGs that Henning was proposing.

> 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

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From: Henk Uijterwaal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 11:40:06 +0200

>We do have deadlines: charters, and external customers (implementors, 

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.

>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

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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 13:10:17 +0300 (EEST)

> 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 Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 06:17:02 -0400

> 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.)

> 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.

> work to a person) but this will require a major change in the basic way we

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

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 12:31:35 +0200

> 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

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

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 08:59:15 -0400

> kind of integration with the I-D tracker would be beneficial here.  Could

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.")

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 15:35:00 +0200

> 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

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:33:04 +0200

> means that nobody has posted any.")

I would suggest more, with support for states such as "New ID needed",
"Adopted by WG" and "WG Last Call in progress" added to the normal tracker.
Remember that for Area Directors, the tracker is an *active* tool, and there
is no computer science reason that it shouldn't be an active tool for
WG Chairs.

      Brian