Proto Team H. Levkowetz Internet-Draft ipUnplugged Expires: August 19, 2004 February 19, 2004 Protocol Pilot: Workgroup Chair Followup of AD Evaluation Comments Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress". The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt . The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html . This Internet-Draft will expire on August 19, 2004. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document describes a pilot implementation of a protocol change within the IETF. The essence of the change is to have workgroup chairs handle the feedback of AD (Area Director) Evaluation comments on a draft to the authors (and workgroup if necessary) and make sure that needed draft changes are made, and the AD notified when a new draft which resolves the comments is available. 1. Introduction As part of the currently ongoing effort to improve the work flow (e.g. speed) of approval of documents, the PROTO team is defining pilot projects to test possible protocol changes. This document describes such a pilot. Levkowetz Expires August 19, 2004 [Page 1] Internet-Draft WG Chair followup of AD-Comments February 2004 The purpose of the pilot described here is to test offloading follow-up work which an Area Director (AD) traditionally has done after he has read through and evaluated a document submitted to the IESG for publication. It is hoped that offloading this onto the chair (or one of the chairs) of the workgroup which submitted the draft will reduce the workload of the AD, and increase the transparency of the process, to boot. The pilot does not include offloading of follow-up for drafts which do not originate in a workgroup. For a discussion of the reasoning underlying piloting of process changes, see [JULY14]. 2. Pilot description 2.1 Participants This pilot involves Area Directors of selected areas, and some or all of the chairs for which the Area Director is Area Advisor. 2.2 Running time and pilot size This pilot is to be run not less than 4 months, and not more than 8 months, unless early experience shows it to be clearly detrimental. It is expected that it will be started shortly after the IETF 59 meeting, and completed in time for the results to be reported at the IETF 60 meeting. The pilot should be run with no less than 3 and not more than 6 ADs, and between 10 and 20 workgroups. 2.3 Assumptios The pilot assumes that the steps an Area Director currently (before this pilot goes into effect) are as follows: 1. Read and evaluate the document, taking notes of issues found. It is expected that each AD has his own style and method of evaluating documents, but roughly the elements given in Section 3.3 of [SIRS] are probably present in the review. 2. Depending on the magnitude of the issues found (and other considerations?), either a) return the document to the chairs with the review, requesting further workgroup work, and post the review to the workgroup mailing list b) send the full review to the authors, with copy to the chairs, and ask for issues to be resolved; post a summary of the review to the workgroup mailing list Levkowetz Expires August 19, 2004 [Page 2] Internet-Draft WG Chair followup of AD-Comments February 2004 c) send the full review to the authors, possibly with copy to the chairs, and ask for nits to be fixed. 3. Follow-up, nudge and iterate until the authors (and workgroup if required) has fixed the issues found, and submitted an updated draft. At this point, the draft is ready for IETF last call if it is a standards-track document (or BCP), or for placement on telechat agenda otherwise. 2.4 Pilot Process Description The pilot process is changed compared with the process described above in that the responsibility for step 3 above is put squarely on the Workgroup Chair, rather than on the Area Director. Step 2 should preferably be modified so that the Area Director sends the AD Evaluation review comments to the chair(s), who in turn forward them to the authors and workgroup as appropriate. The steps are then as follows: 1. The AD reads, evaluates and writes down comments as before. 2. Depending on the magnitude of the issues found (and other considerations?), the AD either d) returns the document to the chairs with the review, requesting further workgroup work, and asks the chairs to post the review to the workgroup mailing list e) send the full review to the chairs, and asks them to ensure that authors and workgroup are informed of the issues which need be resolved f) send the full review to the chairs, and asks them to ensure that the authors fix nits as needed. 3. If there is more than one chair, they decide on which one should be responsible for ensuring that the needed fixes are done. 4. The chair responsible reads through the AD Evaluation comments, making very certain that all comments are understood, so that it is possible to follow up on them with the authors and workgroup. If there is some uncertainty as to what is requested, this must be resolved with the Area Director. 5. The responsible chair follows-up, nudges and iterates until the authors (and workgroup if required) has fixed the issues found, and submitted an updated draft. At this point, the AD is notified. 6. The Area Director verifies that the issues he found during AD Evaluation are resolved in the new version of the draft. 2.5 Wrap-up Levkowetz Expires August 19, 2004 [Page 3] Internet-Draft WG Chair followup of AD-Comments February 2004 3. Security considerations This document specifies a pilot implementation of a change in IETF procedures. It does not raise or consider any protocol-specific security issues. When evaluating the result of the pilot, the IESG should evaluate if the changes has reduced the quality of security review and consideration for protocols, and take this into consideration when deciding whether the changes should be made permanent. Informative References [JULY14] Klensin, J. and S. Dawkins, "A model for IETF Process Experiments", draft-klensin-process-july14-00 (work in progress), February 2004. [SIRS] Carpenter, B. and D. Crocker, "Careful Additional Review of Documents (CARD)by Senior IETF Reviewers (SIRS)", draft-carpenter-solution-sirs-01 (work in progress), June 2003. Author's Address Henrik Levkowetz ipUnplugged AB Arenavagen 23 Stockholm S-121 28 SWEDEN Phone: +46 708 32 16 08 EMail: henrik@levkowetz.com Levkowetz Expires August 19, 2004 [Page 4] Internet-Draft WG Chair followup of AD-Comments February 2004 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. 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This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION Levkowetz Expires August 19, 2004 [Page 5] Internet-Draft WG Chair followup of AD-Comments February 2004 HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Levkowetz Expires August 19, 2004 [Page 6]