Subject: IETF Tools Architecture and Strategy Team

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2020 09:55:29 -0500

Hi all,

I'd like to introduce a new volunteer team that has been created in the General area: the Tools Architecture and Strategy (TAS) team.

The current set of tools supported by the IETF Tools Team, including Datatracker, Postconfirm, Mail Archive, XML2RFC, RFCDiff, and YANGCatalog, has been developed and maintained over many years by committed volunteers and contractors. The current tools suite has been developed with extensive input and contributions from the community, and as a result many previously unmet needs are today being met with the IETF tools.

As with many community-driven software development efforts, IETF tools implementations have seen contributions from multiple developers and the tools footprint has spread organically over many years. While this has been productive it has been in the absence of a well defined architecture and strategy that unites them all together. Given the breadth of functionality in the tools suite and advances in how software is developed, guiding architectural principles to which IETF tools align and an overall strategy that sets out general objectives and means of achieving them are necessary, applicable across the full tools suite.

The IETF Tools Architecture and Strategy (TAS) team is tasked with developing this architectural and strategic guidance for IETF tools development. Initial topics that the TAS team may wish to consider include:

• End-to-end coverage of the IETF participant workflow
• Extensibility and maintainability
• Operational scalability, performance, and security profiles of tools
• User experience design, testing, and analysis

It is not the role of the TAS team to implement, maintain, or manage the operation of individual tools. Those responsibilities remain with the IETF tools team. Once TAS team guidance documents become available, the IETF Tools Project Manager (currently Robert Sparks) will establish plans and workflows to align ongoing and future tools development with the guidance.

The TAS team is expected to consult widely with the IETF community, to draw on best practices from the software development industry and open source communities, and to evolve its guidance over time as practices change. The team's online presence resides at:

Datatracker page: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/tools-arch/about/
Mailing list (only open to members, with a public archive): [email-masked]
Github organization: https://github.com/ietf-team-tools-arch

The TAS team members and team leaders are appointed by the General Area Director. The composition of the team is meant to reflect understanding of the IETF tools suite and its history as well as cloud software development processes and deployments. Team leadership changes are expected approximately every two years. Team membership will be assessed and potentially refreshed annually. The initial team members are:

Jari Arkko
Silvia Botros
Jay Daley (LLC liaison)
Tony Hansen
Tero Kivinen
John Levine
Mark Nottingham
Rich Salz (co-lead)
Jim Schaad
David Schinazi
Robert Sparks (tools team liaison)
Martin Thomson (co-lead)

If you have questions about the team, feel free to send them to me or the co-leads, Rich Salz <[email-masked]> and Martin Thomson <[email-masked]>.

Best,
Alissa Cooper
IETF Chair