Subject: Let's make the benches longer.... (Re: draft-klensin-nomcom-term-00.txt)

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 18:02:29 +0200

--On 27. juli 2005 09:08 -0400 "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> I have to disagree somewhat with this line suggesting stricter limits on
> serving duration.
> I agree that a lack of bench strength is a real problem that should be
> addressed.
> I suspect that we may have more bench strength than we think.
> I strongly suspect that with some of the other changes being discussed (I
> like the separate review idea, although I think it needs some work) there
> will be more capability to do more sane jobs.
>
> However, defining the process so taht if we turn out to have insufficient
> bench strength we produce a disaster seems extremely bad design.

I have argued at times (draft-iesg-alvestrand-twolevel) that our current 
structure of 2 area-specific ADs managing a bunch of WG-specific WG chairs 
is not optimal.

If the *normal* case for an area was that one had a group of 5-10 area 
experts, one (or two) of which was serving as AD at any time, and the 
normal process for AD replacement involved choosing which of the people who 
had worked with the AD for a long time could do the job this time, I think 
our "bench strength" would be greatly increased.

It would also make a lot of the arguments for 2-AD areas less convincing.

But that's entirely orthogonal to draft-klensin-nomcom-terms, which is why 
I changed the subject.

                  Harald

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 18:35:14 +0200

> I have argued at times (draft-iesg-alvestrand-twolevel) that our 
> current structure of 2 area-specific ADs managing a bunch of 
> WG-specific WG chairs is not optimal.

Yeah, and I wish it hadn't expired ... perhaps we could try again, now 
that Harald has some time on his retired-AD hands?

It is orthogonal, but I liked it a couple of years ago ...

Spencer

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From: Eric Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 12:42:30 -0400

> the  normal process  for AD  replacement  involved choosing  which of  the
> people who had  worked with the AD for  a long time could do  the job this
> time, 

In American vernacular, this procedure is known as "cronyism".  

Generally, one doesn't expect to see this advocated in a public forum ;-)

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 10:17:29 -0700 (PDT)

> Generally, one doesn't expect to see this advocated in a public forum ;-)
I'm thinking the idea might be closer to...

Each AD creates a "staff" of volunteers underneath themselves to help with
all the pesky details of running the IESG.  (and in the mean time - they
get help from 2-3 additional people that they are working closely with) 
>From there each AD could say that "in the last 6 months of my term person
A was really running the show anyway - why don't we let them be the AD for
a while, and I will get back to productive IETF work (or become their
assistant for a while).

Now we have a group of people that knows what they are getting into when
they finally put that yellow dot on.

Another alternative might be rolling terms for each AD, with a (sorry
incoming Intel lingo here) two-in-a-box approach.  As a new AD is
approved, the term overlaps with the Old AD for a year.  Then they can
serve as long as they want - with the caviat they are expected to give a
year notification so they can serve the last year of their term with the
new incoming AD.  (this might just naturally shorten the terms as people
realize it is easier to do the job as a pair than all alone <G>)

Bill

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:12:05 +0200

--On 1. august 2005 12:42 -0400 Eric Rosen <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
>> the  normal process  for AD  replacement  involved choosing  which of
>> the people who had  worked with the AD for  a long time could do  the
>> job this time,
>

please read the draft.... this margin is not wide enough to contain the 
proof that it isn't :-)

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From: "Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 16:38:32 -0400

> Generally, one doesn't expect to see this advocated in a public forum ;-)

In the corporate world, it's called "succession planning", and part
the responsibilities and duties of every responsible leader.

We actually have something rather close to this already, which is the
various Area Directorates.  Different areas seem to have different
levels of health in terms of how active the directorate is, how formal
is directorate membership, and how much work gets delegated from the
AD(s) to the directorate.

					- Ted

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 08:24:50 +0200

On rereading, my previous reply could have been better formulated......

> Generally, one doesn't expect to see this advocated in a public forum ;-)

The selection mechanism I advocated was the following (quoted from the 
expired draft):

> 5. Details
>
>    All members of the leadership are selected by the nomcom for
>    membership in an area.
>    The nomcom also selects which member is supervisor and vice
>    supervisor for an area.
>
>    [UNCERTAIN]The supervisor may also be selected by the members of the
>    council, or by other means.  Yearly selection by the council?
>    It's also been suggested that instead of nomcom selecting everyone,
>    the leadership team can make selections to the area councils, based
>    on recommendations from the area supervisor.  This would not increase
>    the load on the nomcom as much as envisaged here.  [/UNCERTAIN]
>
>    Special care should be taken that the composition of area teams and
>    the leadership team results in functional teams.

(The term "area supervisor" is a concept that is a successor to the current 
term "AD" - the draft tried to use new names to point out that things 
changed.)

One core difference between this idea and directorates is that directorates 
serve, explicitly, at the pleasure of an AD; ADs can create, disband or 
replace directorates without any public input or control. Your concern is 
one reason why the idea was different.

Note that nothing here prevents the nomcom from picking people outside the 
"council" to be supervisor; if all is well, common sense would say that 
they don't, but when things are not well, they should have the power (IMHO).

But the idea didn't generate any groundswell of "let's do it", either in 
the community or in the IESG, so I turned to fixing things that were more 
obviously broken, with more obvious fixes.....

                     Harald