Subject: RE: area directors at risk

From: "Awduche, Daniel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 17:29:55 -0500

It might be worthwhile to admit additional hierarchy in
the administrative structure to scale the organization 
and reduce the work-load on area directors. 

One possibility is to introduce the concept of assistant 
(or deputy) Area Directors, reporting directly to Area 
Directors and responsible for a subset of working groups 
within an area. 

This may also turn out to be an excellent way to cultivate
future leaders for the IETF.

Cheers,
/Dan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Falk [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 4:43 PM
> To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: area directors at risk
> 
> 
> Harald, John, et al-
> 
> At the last IETF plenary I asked the IESG to comment on the work load
> for area directors and got what I thought was a less than satisfactory
> response.  I understand that it's hard being put on the spot so I'm
> bringing the issue up again on this list to enable some more
> thoughtful dialog (I hope :).
> 
> As a working group chair, I know that the attention and guidance of a
> good area director can do a lot to make a working group more
> productive as well as training good working group chairs.  Area
> directors bring a larger perspective from other IETF activities into
> working groups and advise the chairs on procedure.  I've been
> privileged to work with, IMHO, three excellent Transport Area
> Directors and have learned from all of them.
> 
> Currently the area director position is a demanding half- to
> two-thirds-time unpaid commitment.  Indeed, there are more Internet
> drafts and working groups than ever and it appears that the time
> required to do the job is only increasing.  I'm concerned that area
> directors seem to be much busier than they used to be and have less
> time for monitoring working group mailing lists and 
> shepherding working
> group documents through the IETF review process.
> 
> I wanted to raise the issue again now that the nomcom process has been
> kicked off.  Specifically, I'm concerned that the time commitment will
> eliminate otherwise competent AD candidates.  I'd like very much to
> hear that IESG and the secretariat are looking at ways to organize the
> way work is done in the IETF so that we can attract and retain
> talented ADs, they are critical to maintaining the high quality of the
> IETF protocols.  Let's not wait until the current ADs are burned out
> and we are unable attract qualified replacements to examine this
> issue.
> 
> --aaron
>

---

From: "James Seng/Personal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 20:15:33 +0800

As the workload increases, the way is to split the work load across more
people or we reduce the workload in the first place. But I dont think
creating assistant AD (adding more layers => brueacracy) is the right
way to go.

Example of split or delegating
- Technical Advisors can have some formal responsibility, e.g. they
  can handle technical appeal

- Have more than 2 ADs with in group which is too overloaded. Then
  different pairs of ADs can take care of different subset of WGs
  in the Area

- Delegate more to wg chairs (As a wg chair, I dont really
  like this. Getting the group to come to rough consensus
  is already taking too much time...)

- Delegate more to wg document editors

Example of reducing work load
- Narrow WG charter is good

- WG which have long-term vision should have short-term objectives.
  Then allow update to action items/goals as the short-term
  objectives is achieved. (downside: update => more work => delegate)

- Enforce stricter in admiting wg draft, based on its current objectives

- Shut down (or have a guideline to shutdown) WG that fails to meets
  its short-term objectives. (e.g. IDN WG). If it cant even meets its
  short-term objectives, the group is going to drag forever. Kill it
  before too late

- Conclude WG that is "dead" and do it quickly. If a WG cannot decide
  what it wants to do next, then there probably nothing to do

Ultimately, more people is going to take up responsibility as workload
increase => we need more people in IETF. We can only pray the % of
talented/committed/working people in IETF grows faster (or remains
constant) as IETF expand.

-James Seng