Subject: [Pce] Visibility into the Chairs' Queue of Work

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2018 09:33:41 -0000

Hi Chairs,

I'm trying to think of ways that the WG participants can get a bet view of
what process work is pending and when to expect it.

At each IETF meeting you present a useful slide showing the "WG documents at
or near last call"

For example, at IETF 103 you showed
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/103/materials/slides-103-pce-1-administ
rivia-and-wg-status-00.pdf which indicates that we had four documents
pending shepherd review.
- inter-area-as-applicability
- stateful-pce-p2mp
- hierarchy-extensions
- association-group
.and four documents in the queue for WG last call
- stateful-pce-auto-bandwidth
- applicability-actn
- pcep-stateful-pce-gmpls
- stateful-hpce

This list is helpful because those of us who want to see work move along can
get in early and do our "last call reviews" even before last call is
started.

Looking at the datatracker and the mailing list, I see that:
- one draft expired ages ago
- one draft has been waiting for the shepherd for 6 weeks
- one has been waiting for the shepherd for only 1 week (seems reasonable
:-)
- one has been waiting for the shepherd for 12 weeks or more
I also see that none of the four WG last calls has been started.

Now, I really don't want to be pissy here: I appreciate the work that the
chairs' do and I know that no one ever got rich being a WG chair. But I
wonder whether we could unstick this a bit and move the drafts along.

Maybe it would help to put this list on the WG wiki so that we can see in a
little bit more detail what the next steps are and who we should be
prodding. If there's a reason why a document is hung, then it would be a
good place to put a note so that we can see. It would also help set our
expectations with regard to ordered lists and timing.

Alternatively, some additional details could easily be put in the tracker
using the sub-states, tags, and history comments. That wouldn't be as easy
to see the whole list and understand the ordering challenges, but it would
keep all the information in one place.

At the same time, I'm trying to work out which documents are queued for
consideration for WG adoption. Now, I know that we can all work on drafts at
any time and don't have to wait for them to be adopted before considering
them seriously, but it is a bit confusing not being able to tell which
documents are waiting for process and when they are likely to be considered.

I looked in the datatracker and I don't see any use of the sub-states/tags
that can indicate "Candidate for WG Adoption". Do the chairs have a list of
documents that they are considering for adoption? Sharing that list (such as
on the wiki) would help save the authors from pestering the chairs at every
opportunity, and would also set expectations for the working group with
regard to timing and ordering. The last adoption poll I can see on the list
ended on October 26th (with the chairs calling "no conclusion") - was that
really the only document ready for consideration?

I think this could be made to a go a lot more smoothly with greater
visibility into the queue, and a wiki page would be cheap and easy to
maintain. I bet the WG secretary would be willing to do this (Hi, Dhruv :-)
but if not, I can set it up and the chairs can add the data.

Thanks for your consideration.

Best,
Adrian
--
Fairy tales from North Wales brought to you for Christmas
https://www.feedaread.com/profiles/8604/
Available from your favourite online bookseller.
Or contact me to receive a signed copy by mail.

---

From: Julien Meuric <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2018 13:41:07 +0100

Hi Adrian,

Thank you for the buttkick, this is sometimes useful, especially when
(temporarily) transitioning from a couple of chairs kicking each other
to a single one struggling at self-kicking. This is another opportunity
to greet Jon again for his valuable work, both on stage and behind the
scene. :-)

Good news: our secretary agrees to implement your proposal on the WG's
wiki. Knowing how proactive Dhruv can be, please find the resulting page
here: https://trac.ietf.org/trac/pce/wiki

About draft-zhang-pce-resource-sharing (which isn't really the last
adoption poll), thanks for the reminder. I've synchronized with Jon and
will follow-up on the corresponding thread.

Last but not least, thank you for the thorough reviews you've recently
shared on the WG list: this is highly valuable to make I-Ds ready to
progress and is clearly helpful to successfully go through the further
steps in the process. Even if not thanked each time, your work is always
appreciated.

Cheers,

Julien

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2018 13:52:56 -0000

I just looked at the wiki. That's totally wonderful.

Thanks for making this happen so quickly.

Best,
Adrian
-----Original Message-----
From: Julien Meuric <[email-masked]> 
Sent: 13 December 2018 12:41
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Visibility into the Chairs' Queue of Work

Hi Adrian,

Cheers,

Julien