Proto Team                                                  H. Levkowetz
Internet-Draft                                                  D. Meyer
Expires: January 10, 2005                                  July 12, 2004


   Protocol Pilot: Workgroup Chair Followup of AD Evaluation Comments
           <draft-ietf-proto-wgchair-doc-shepherding-00.txt>

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Abstract

   This document describes a pilot implementation of a protocol change
   within the IETF.  The essence of the change is to have workgroup
   chairs more involved in the progress of the document after the
   workgroup and document editor have handed over the document for
   publication.  The activities involved in this are: 1) providing a
   writeup for the document, to accompany the request for publication
   which is sent to the secretariat and the ADs (Area Directors); 2)
   following up on AD Evaluation comments on a draft to the authors and
   workgroup; and 3) following up on IESG comments (DISCUSS comments as
   well as other) on the draft.



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1.  Introduction

   As part of the currently ongoing effort to improve the work flow
   (particularly speed of approval) of documents, the  PROTO team
   [PROTO] is defining pilot projects to test possible protocol changes.
   This document describes such a pilot.

   The purpose of the pilot described here is to test offloading
   follow-up work which an Area Director (AD) traditionally has done.
   This includes both follow-up after the AD has read through and
   evaluated a document submitted to the IESG for publication, and
   follow-up on IESG comments (DISCUSS comments and others) on a
   document.  It is hoped that offloading this onto the chair (or one of
   the chairs) of the workgroup which submitted the draft will increase
   the speed of follow-up and the transparency of the process, and
   reduce the workload of the AD to boot.  The pilot does not cover
   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 2 and not
   more than 6 ADs, and between 5 and 20 workgroups.

   The running time should be chosen such that the participating ADs and
   WG chairs have opportunity to get past the initial learning and
   first-time execution barrier, and get some familiarity with the
   process before the pilot is closed and evaluated.

2.3  Pilot Process Description

2.3.1  WG Chair Writeup

   When a draft is ready to be submitted for publication, it is the task
   of the shepherding workgroup chair to do a document writeup for the



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   draft.

   There are two parts to this task.  First, answer questions 1-8 so
   that your responsible Area Director can get insight into the working
   group process as applied to this draft.  These questions may appear
   redundant in some cases but are written to elicit any tidbits of
   information that the AD should be aware of.  (Pointers to relevant
   entries in the WG archive will be helpful.)  The goal is to inform
   your AD about any issues that may have come up in IETF meetings, on
   the mailing list, or in private communication that they should be
   aware of prior to taking this draft to IESG.  Don't be surprised if
   your AD has further questions.  Any significant issues mentioned in
   the questionnaire will probably lead to a followup discussion with
   the AD.

   The second part is to prepare the "Protocol Writeup" which is dually
   used first as the ballot writeup for the IESG telechat and then the
   IETF-wide protocol announcement.  Item number 9 describes the
   elements of the writeup.  If you haven't done this before, try
   looking at other protocol announcements (in the IETF Announce
   archive) and expect some comments from your AD on the draft.

   1.   Have the chairs personally reviewed this version of the ID and
        do they believe this ID is sufficiently baked to forward to the
        IESG for publication?

   2.   Has the document had adequate review from both key WG members
        and key non-WG members?  Do you have any concerns about the
        depth or breadth of the reviews that have been performed?

   3.   Do you have concerns that the document needs more review from a
        particular (broader) perspective (e.g., security, operational
        complexity, someone familiar with AAA, etc.)?

   4.   Do you have any specific concerns/issues with this document that
        you believe the ADs and/or IESG should be aware of?  For
        example, perhaps you are uncomfortable with certain parts of the
        document, or whether there really is a need for it, etc., but at
        the same time these issues have been discussed in the WG and the
        WG has indicated it wishes to advance the document anyway.

   5.   How solid is the WG consensus behind this document?  Does it
        represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with
        others being silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and
        agree with it?

   6.   Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
        discontent?  If so, please summarise what are they upset about.



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   7.   Have the chairs verified that the document adheres to _all_ of
        the ID nits? (see http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html).

   8.   Does the document a) split references into normative/
        informative, and b) are there normative references to IDs, where
        the IDs are not also ready for advancement or are otherwise in
        an unclear state? (Note: the RFC editor will not publish an RFC
        with normative references to IDs, it will delay publication
        until all such IDs are also ready for publication as RFCs.)

   9.   For Standards Track and BCP documents, the IESG approval
        announcement includes a writeup section with the following
        sections:

        *  Technical Summary

        *  Working Group Summary

        *  Protocol Quality

   10.  Please provide such a writeup. (We will hopefully use it as is,
        but may make some changes.) For recent examples, have a look at
        the "protocol action" announcements for approved documents.

   11.  Note:

        *  When doing the technical summary, one would expect that the
           relevant information is in the abstract and/or introduction
           of the document.  It turns out that the step of producing the
           writeup sometimes points out deficiencies in the
           introduction/abstract that are also worthy of rectifying.

        *  For the Working Group Summary, was there anything in WG
           process that is worth noting? (E.g., controversy about
           particular points, decisions where consensus was particularly
           rough, etc.)

        *  For the protocol quality, useful information could include:

           +  is the protocol already being implemented?

           +  have a significant number of vendors indicated they plan
              to implement the spec?

           +  are there any reviewers (during the end stages) that merit
              explicit mention as having done a thorough review that
              resulted in important changes or a conclusion that the
              document was fine (except for maybe some nits?)



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2.3.2  AD Review Shepherding

   The steps for workgroup chair shepherding of AD reviews are as
   follows:

   1.  If there is more than one chair, the chairs decide on which one
       should be responsible for ensuring that the needed fixes are done
       when the AD returns comments.  This can for instance be done at
       the time the publication request is sent.  It is important that
       this is an explicit agreement.

   2.  The AD reads, evaluates and writes comments pretty much as
       before.  However, note that since the communication between AD
       and authors is not direct, the need for clear and
       well-articulated review comments is somewhat larger.

   3.  Depending on the magnitude of the issues found (and other
       considerations?), the AD returns the full review to the chairs,
       and requests either:

       3.a) that further workgroup work be undertaken to put the
        document into shape to be published

       3.b) that authors and workgroup are informed of the issues found
        and resolve them in a revised draft

       3.c) that the authors fix nits as needed.

       As covered below, the comments will be posted to the workgroup
       mailing list.  The comments will normally also be posted by the
       AD in the ID Tracker [IDTRACKER].  Working groups that use issue
       tracking should also record the issues (and eventually their
       resolution) in the issue tracker.

   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 sends the comments to the author(s) and to
       the workgroup mailing list, in order to have a permanent record
       of the comments.  It is recommended that the chair solicit from
       the author(s) an estimate on when the fixes will be done - i.e.,
       when the submission of a revised draft can be expected.

   6.  When incorporating the fixes in the new version of the draft, it
       is strongly recommended that the revising editor keep a summary



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       list showing how the issues were addressed issue by issue, and
       showing what the revised text is.  If such a list is forwarded to
       the AD with the revised draft, it will make it possible for the
       AD to verify the fixes very quickly.

   7.  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 of the revised draft, and provided with the summary list
       of issues and resulting text changes.

       In the event that the working group disagrees with a comment
       raised by the AD or has already considered the issue and
       previously ruled it out, this must be discussed and resolved with
       the AD before the new version of the draft is submitted.

   8.  The Area Director verifies that the issues he found during AD
       Evaluation are resolved by the new version of the draft.

   9.  (Hopefully, that's it, but in the worst case this starts over at
       1 again...)


2.3.3  IESG Discuss Shepherding

   In this section we detail the steps that a shepherding WG chair will
   take in resolving the DISCUSS items against a given ID. The steps are
   given below, in the order that they are to be executed.

   1.  Immediately after the weekly IESG conference call, the
       shepherding WG chair queries the ID tracker [IDTRACKER] to
       collect any DISCUSS comments raised against the ID. In order to
       accomplish this, the shepherding WG chair's email address must be
       added to the "State Change Notice To:" field in the ID tracker.
       This will result in an email to the shepherding WG chair when the
       document is moved from the "IESG Evaluation" state to the "IESG
       Evaluation/New ID Needed state", which occurs after the IESG
       teleconference.  This notification indicates to the the
       shepherding WG chair that the DISCUSS comments have been
       registered.

       Note that there may be exceptional cases when DISCUSS comments
       are registered after the IESG teleconference.  In these cases,
       the DISCUSSing AD should notify the shepherding WG chair that new
       comments have been entered.

   2.  The shepherding WG chair analyses comments from the tracker, and
       initialises contact with any AD's who have placed comments



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       (blocking or non-blocking) on a draft, notifying them that the
       shepherding WG chair is the current document shepherd and seeking
       any additional clarification necessary to understand the comment.
       Note that the responsible AD must copied on this correspondence.


   +------+  Comments     +--------+  Comments      +-------+
   | (i)  |-------------> |  (ii)  | -------------> | (iii) |
   +------+  Collected    +--------+  Understood    +-------+
                           /|\   |
                            |    | Comments not fully understood
                            |    | (Further AD/shepherding WG chair
                            |    |  Discussion Required)
                            +----+

   3.  The shepherding WG chair then coordinates DISCUSS comments, and
       builds a a consistent interpretation of the comments.  This step
       may require iteration with step (2). above.  That is:

   +------+   Consistent     +-------+
   | (ii) |----------------> | (iii) |
   +------+ Interpretation   +-------+
     /|\                         |
      |                          | Further AD/shepherding WG chair
      |                          | Discussion Required
      +--------------------------+

   4.  The DISCUSS comments are then communicated to the working group.

   5.  After the author(s) resolve the issues provided by the
       shepherding WG chair (i.e., the distilled DISCUSS issues), the
       shepherding WG chair reviews the updated document to ensure that
       (in her/his option) the DISCUSS issues have been resolved.

       Note that the shepherding WG chair may also propose resolutions
       to these issues, file them in an issue tracker, or do other steps
       to streamline the resolution of the comments.

   6.  The shepherding WG chair communicates the resolution-so-far to
       the responsible AD and the DISCUSSing AD(s).

   7.  DISCUSSing AD removes DISCUSS comment, or tells the WG why the
       comment is not resolved.

       If the DISCUSS comment in question was not resolved to the
       satisfaction of the DISCUSSing and responsible ADs, two
       possibilities exist:




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       1.  (a). The process returns to step (3), or

       2.  (b). The working group can appeal in accordance with the
           procedures described in RFC 2418 [RFC2418].

       Otherwise, the process continues with step (8).

   8.  The responsible AD moves document to APPROVED state, or sends it
       back to the IESG for re-review (if the changes are deemed
       significant).


2.4  Wrap-up

   At the end of the pilot lifetime, it is expected that an evaluation
   of the experienced benefits is made, using input solicited from the
   participating Area Directors and Workgroup Chairs by means of an
   email questionnaire, web-page form or something similar.  The
   questions are given below, in Section 2.4.2. A per-review
   questionnaire is also provided in Section 2.4.1.

2.4.1  Questionnaire to be done after each individual AD Review

   To be done by both WG Chair and AD.

   R1.   I'm submitting this questionnaire as
         1.    Area Director
         2.    Workgroup Chair

   R2.   Document name:

   R3.   WG Chair shepherding of the AD evaluation comments for this
         draft speeded up the procedure:
         1.    Strongly disagree
         2.    Disagree
         3.    Undecided
         4.    Agree
         5.    Strongly agree













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   R4.   WG Chair shepherding of the AD evaluation comments for this
         draft resulted in the comments being resolved in a satisfactory
         manner:
         1.    Strongly disagree
         2.    Disagree
         3.    Undecided
         4.    Agree
         5.    Strongly agree

   R5.   WG Chair shepherding of the AD evaluation comments for this
         draft resulted in a more transparent process:
         1.    Strongly disagree
         2.    Disagree
         3.    Undecided
         4.    Agree
         5.    Strongly agree

   R6.   WG Chair shepherding of the AD evaluation comments for this
         draft resulted in a more well-documented process:
         1.    Strongly disagree
         2.    Disagree
         3.    Undecided
         4.    Agree
         5.    Strongly agree

   R7.   The interaction with the document editors in resolving the
         comments worked out well:
         1.    Strongly disagree
         2.    Disagree
         3.    Undecided
         4.    Agree
         5.    Strongly agree

   R8.   - Public Comments?

   R9.   - Comments to IESG and PROTO-Team only?

   R10.  WG Chair shepherding of the AD evaluation comments for this
         draft worked out well, overall:
         1.    Strongly disagree
         2.    Disagree
         3.    Undecided
         4.    Agree
         5.    Strongly agree







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   R11.  - Public Comments?

   R12.  - Comments to IESG and PROTO-Team only?


2.4.2  Questionnaire for the Pilot as a Whole

   To be done by both WG Chair and AD.

   X1.   Document name:

   X2.   I clearly understood what was expected of me in this pilot.
         1.    Strongly disagree
         2.    Disagree
         3.    Undecided
         4.    Agree
         5.    Strongly agree

         Comments?

   X3.   What is your evaluation of the benefit of the procedure you've
         tried out in this pilot?
         1.    Definitely harmful
         2.    Somewhat harmful
         3.    Mixed feelings
         4.    Somewhat beneficial
         5.    Definitely beneficial

         Comments?

   X4.   What is your evaluation of the added effort required for the
         procedure you've tried out in this pilot?
         1.    Major increased effort
         2.    Somewhat increased
         3.    No change
         4.    Somewhat decreased effort
         5.    Major decreased effort

         Comments?












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   X5.   Considering all factors, this procedure should be made the
         normal way of handling AD evaluation comments.
         1.    Strongly disagree
         2.    Disagree
         3.    Undecided
         4.    Agree
         5.    Strongly agree

         Comments?

   X6.   What do you consider to be the major advantages of this
         procedure change?

   X7.   What do you consider to be the major disadvantages of this
         procedure change?

   X8.   How would you change the procedure to minimise the
         disadvantages?

   X9.   Comments to the IESG and PROTO-Team only:


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 check 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.

4  Informative References

   [RFC2026]  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
              3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.

   [RFC2028]  Hovey, R. and S. Bradner, "The Organizations Involved in
              the IETF Standards Process", BCP 11, RFC 2028, October
              1996.

   [JULY14]   Klensin, J. and S. Dawkins, "A model for IETF Process
              Experiments", draft-klensin-process-july14-02 (work in
              progress), April 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



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              2003.

   [IDTRACKER]
              "The IETF Draft Tracker", Web Application: https://
              datatracker.ietf.org/.

   [PROTO]    "The IESG Process and Tools (PROTO) Team", Web Page:
              http://psg.com/~mrw/PROTO-Team.


Authors' Addresses

   Henrik Levkowetz
   Torsgatan 71
   Stockholm  S-113 37
   SWEDEN

   Phone: +46 708 32 16 08
   EMail: henrik@levkowetz.com


   David Meyer

   EMail: dmm@1-4-5.net



























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