Proto Team A. Falk Internet-Draft ISI Expires: September 16, 2005 H. Levkowetz Ericsson D. Meyer Cisco/University of Oregon March 15, 2005 The PROTO Process: Working Group Chair Document Shepherding draft-ietf-proto-wgchair-doc-shepherding-05 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 3 of RFC 3667. By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she become aware will be disclosed, in accordance with RFC 3668. 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 September 16, 2005. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). Abstract The methodologies described in this document have been designed to improve and facilitate IETF document flow processing. A set of processes and procedures, known as the PROTO process, are specified Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 in which a working group chair serves as the primary document shepherd for a document which has been submitted to the IESG for publication. Note that this role has traditionally been filled by the AD responsible for the working group. The shepherd's responsibilities include: 1. Providing the write-up accompanying a document that is forwarded to the IESG for publication. Note that this write-up had traditionally been provided by the "Shepherding Area Director". Under the processes and procedures described here, the working group chair provides this write-up. 2. Following up on AD Evaluation comments to the authors and working group, and 3. Following up on all IESG comments ("DISCUSSes") related to the shepherded draft. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3. Process Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.1 WG Chair Write-Up for Publication Request . . . . . . . . 5 3.2 AD Review Shepherding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3.3 IESG Discuss Shepherding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4. When Not to Use PROTO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 6. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 8. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 A. Working documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 14 Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 1. Introduction Early in 2004, the IESG undertook several experiments aimed at evaluating whether any of the proposed changes to the IETF document flow process would yield qualitative improvements in document throughput and quality. One such experiment, referred to as PROTO [PROTO], is a set of methodologies designed to involve the working group chairs more directly in their documents' approval life cycle. In particular, the PROTO team focused on that part of the document's life cycle which occurs after the working group and document editor would have traditionally forwarded the document to the IESG for publication. The methodologies developed and piloted by the PROTO team (hereafter referred to as the "PROTO process" or simply "PROTO") focus on the working group chair as the primary document shepherd. In this context, the shepherd's responsibilities include: 1. Providing the write-up accompanying a document that has been forwarded to the IESG for publication. This write-up had traditionally been provided by the "Shepherding Area Director". Under PROTO, the Working Group Chair provides this write-up. 2. Following up on AD Evaluation comments to the authors and working group, and 3. Following up on all IESG comments ("DISCUSSes") related to the shepherded draft. By the end of 2004, the IESG had evaluated the utility of the PROTO methodologies based on data obtained though several pilot projects which had run throughout the year, and subsequently decided to adopt the PROTO process. The primary objective of the PROTO process is to improve document throughput and quality by enabling a partnership between the Responsible Area Director and the Shepherding Working Group Chair (note that the Working Group Chair, in consultation with the Responsible Area Director, may designate the Working Group Secretary, if one exists, to be the shepherd for a particular document). In particular, this partnership has the explicit goal of empowering the Shepherding WG Chair while at the same time offloading a specific part of the follow-up work which had traditionally been responsibility of the Responsible Area Director. As such, PROTO has been scoped to include both the follow-up after the Responsible Area Director has read through and evaluated a document submitted to the IESG for publication, as well as follow-up on all IESG comments on a document (i.e., DISCUSSes). Finally, it is important to note that Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 PROTO does not cover follow-up for drafts which do not originate in a working group. The remainder of this document is organised as follows: Section 3 outlines the overall PROTO process. Section 3.1 describes the write-up which accompanies the publication request, Section 3.2 describes the AD Review shepherding process, and Section 3.3 describes IESG Discuss Shepherding. Finally, Section 4 describes those cases in which the PROTO process should not be used. 2. Terminology The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. 3. Process Description The PROTO process involves Area Directors of selected areas, and some or all of the chairs for which the Area Director is Area Advisor. The PROTO process is divided into three tasks: o Doing a WG Chair Write-Up for a document (Section 3.1), o Following up on AD review comments (Section 3.2), and o Following up on IESG DISCUSS comments (Section 3.3) 3.1 WG Chair Write-Up for Publication Request When a draft is ready to be submitted for publication, it is the task of the Shepherding WG Chair to do a document write-up for the draft. There are two parts to this task. First, the Shepherding WG Chair answers questions 1.a to 1.h below to give the Responsible Area Director insight into the working group process as applied to this draft. Note that while these questions may appear redundant in some cases, they are written to elicit information that the AD must be aware of (to this end, pointers to relevant entries in the WG archive will be helpful). The goal here is to inform the 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 IESG evaluation of the shepherded draft. Any significant issues mentioned in the questionnaire will probably lead to a follow-up discussion with the AD. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 The second part of the task is to prepare the "Protocol Write-Up" which is used both for the ballot write-up for the IESG telechat and for the the IETF-wide protocol announcement. Item number 1.i describes the elements of the write-up. Please see other protocol announcements in the IETF Announce archive for examples of such write-ups. 1.a) Have the chairs personally reviewed this version of the Internet Draft (ID), and in particular, do they believe this ID is ready to forward to the IESG for publication? 1.b) 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? 1.c) 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.)? 1.d) 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 have concerns whether there really is a need for it. In any event, if your issues have been discussed in the WG and the WG has indicated it that it still wishes to advance the document, detail those concerns in the write-up. 1.e) 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? 1.f) Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If so, please summarise the areas of conflict in separate email to the Responsible Area Director. 1.g) Have the chairs verified that the document adheres to all of the ID nits? (see http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html). 1.h) Is the document split into normative and informative references? Are there normative references to IDs, where the IDs are not also ready for advancement or are otherwise in an unclear state? (note here that 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.) Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 1.i) For Standards Track and BCP documents, the IESG approval announcement includes a write-up section with the following sections: * Technical Summary * Working Group Summary * Protocol Quality 1.j) Please provide such a write-up. Recent examples can be found in the "protocol action" announcements for approved documents. 1.k) Note: * The relevant information for the technical summary can frequently be found in the abstract and/or introduction of the document. If not, this may be an indication that there are deficiencies in the abstract or introduction. * For the Working Group Summary: Was there anything in WG process that is worth noting? For example, was there controversy about particular points, decisions where consensus was particularly rough, etc. * For the protocol quality, useful information includes: + Are there existing implementations of the protocol? + Have a significant number of vendors indicated they plan to implement the specification? + Are there any reviewers that merit special mention as having done a thorough review (i.e., that resulted in important changes or a conclusion that the document had no substantive issues)? The questionnaire and write-up is sent to the ADs and iesg-secretary@ietf.org with a request to publish the document. The questionnaire and write-up, minus any discussion of possible appeals, is also sent to the working group mailing list. The publication request SHOULD also indicate which chair will be shepherding the document (this will be entered into the ID Tracker [IDTRACKER]). In addition to making life easier for the ADs, this lets the IETF chair know where to send Gen-ART [GEN-ART] reviews. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 3.2 AD Review Shepherding The steps for working group chair shepherding of AD reviews are as follows: 2.a) 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 MUST be done before the publication request is sent, so that the information can be included in the request, as mentioned above. This MUST be an explicit agreement among the working group chairs. 2.b) The AD reads, evaluates and comments on the draft (as is the case when not using PROTO). 2.c) Depending on the magnitude of the issues found, the AD returns the full review to the chairs, and requests that either: * Further editorial work must be done on the document before it can be published, or, * ID Nits must be fixed before the document before it can be published, or * A revised draft is is required to resolve issues that have been found in subsequent IESG review. As covered below, the comments will be posted to the working group 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. 2.d) The Shepherding WG Chair 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 working group. If there is some uncertainty as to what is requested, this must be resolved with the Area Director. 2.e) The Shepherding WG Chair sends the comments to the author(s) and to the working group 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, that is, when the revised draft can be expected. 2.f) When incorporating the fixes in the new version of the draft, it is strongly RECOMMENDED that the editor keep a list showing how each issue was addressed and showing what the revised text is. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 It is strongly RECOMMENDED that this list be forwarded to the Responsible Area Director with the revised draft. 2.g) The Shepherding WG Chair iterates with the authors (and working group if required) until the outstanding issues have been resolved and a revised draft has been submitted. At this point, the AD is notified 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 previously considered and dismissed the issue, the Shepherding WG Chair MUST resolve the issue with the AD before a revised draft can be submitted. 2.h) The Area Director verifies that the issues he found during AD Evaluation are resolved by the new version of the draft. 2.i) The shepherding process normally terminates at this point. However, in the event that no resolution can be found, the process goes to 1. above (i.e., essentially restarts). 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. Note that occasionally DISCUSSes are written in a manner that makes their primary intent unclear. In these cases, the Shepherding WG Chair (and possibly the document editor) and DISCUSSing AD SHOULD meet (either in person or electronically) to resolve the issue. In addition, the Responsible Area Director SHOULD be notified of the meeting. If this process fails to clarify or resolve the DISCUSS, the Shepherding WG Chair MAY further involve the Responsible Area Director in the resolution process. 3.a) 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 is 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 changes state from the "IESG Evaluation" state to one of the states requiring Shepherd actions (i.e., "IESG Evaluation: Revised ID Needed", "IESG Evaluation: AD Followup"). This notification indicates to the the Shepherding WG Chair that the DISCUSS comments have been registered. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 9] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 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. 3.b) The Shepherding WG Chair analyses comments from the tracker, and initialises contact with any AD's who have placed comments (blocking or non-blocking) on the draft that is being shepherded. In particular, the Shepherding WG Chair MUST notify the relevant ADs that the Shepherding WG Chair is the current document shepherd. Note that the Responsible Area Director MUST be copied on this correspondence. +------+ Comments +--------+ Comments +-------+ | (3.a)| ------------> | (3.b) | -------------> | (3.c) | +------+ Collected +--------+ Understood +-------+ /|\ | | | Comments not fully understood | | (Further AD/Shepherding WG | | Chair Discussion Required) | | +----+ 3.c) 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 +-------+ | (3.b)| ---------------> | (3.c) | +------+ Interpretation +-------+ /|\ | | | Further AD/Shepherding WG | | Chair discussion required +--------------------------+ 3.d) The DISCUSS comments are then communicated to the working group. 3.e) After the author(s) resolve the issues provided by the Shepherding WG Chair (i.e., the summarised 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. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 10] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 3.f) The Shepherding WG Chair communicates the resolution-so-far to the responsible AD and the DISCUSSing AD(s). 3.g) DISCUSSing AD removes DISCUSS comment, or tells the Shepherding WG Chair and adds information to the ID tracker explaining why the comment is not resolved. The Shepherding WG Chair informs the working group accordingly. If the DISCUSS comment in question was not resolved to the satisfaction of the DISCUSSing AD(s) and Responsible Area Director, two possibilities exist: (a) The process returns to step (3.c), or (b) If no progress can be made on the resolution of the DISCUSS with the DISCUSSING AD, despite clarification and additional involvement of the Responsible Area Director, the Shepherding WG Chair and the WG might at last resort consider an appeal in accordance with the procedures described in RFC 2026 [RFC2026] and referred to in RFC 2418 [RFC2418]. Otherwise, the process continues with step (3.h). 3.h) The Responsible Area Director moves document to APPROVED state, or if the changes are deemed significant, there may be a new WG last call. Finally, the document goes to the full IESG for re-review. 4. When Not to Use PROTO As mentioned above, there are several cases in which the PROTO process SHOULD NOT be used. These include 1. Those cases in which the WG chair primary document author or editor, or the WG chair is the primary author or editor of a large percentage of the documents produced by the working group, 2. Those cases in which the Responsible Area Director expects communication difficulties with the WG chair (either due to experience, strong views stated by the chair, or other issues), and 3. Those cases in which the working group itself is either very old, losing energy, or winding down. i.e., those cases in which it would not be productive to initiate new processes or procedures. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 11] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 Finally, note these guidelines are intended to help the Responsible Area Director determine when to use the PROTO process. The final determination as to whether to use the PROTO process or not is left to the Responsible Area Director's discretion. 5. Security Considerations This document specifies a change to IETF document flow procedures. As such, it neither raises nor considers protocol-specific security issues. 6. Acknowledgments This document is the product of PROTO team, which includes authors as well as Allison Mankin, Bill Fenner, Barbara Fuller, and Margaret Wasserman. 7. IANA Considerations This document creates no new requirements on IANA namespaces or other IANA requirements. 8. 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. [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC2418] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998. [IDTRACKER] "The IETF Draft Tracker", Web Application: https://datatracker.ietf.org/, 2004. [PROTO] "The IESG Process and Tools (PROTO) Team", Web Page: http://psg.com/~mrw/PROTO-Team, 2004. [GEN-ART] "The General Area Review Team (GEN-ART)", Web Page: http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/gen/review-guidelines. html, 2005. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 12] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 Authors' Addresses Aaron Falk Email: falk@isi.edu Henrik Levkowetz Torsgatan 71 Stockholm S-113 37 SWEDEN Phone: +46 708 32 16 08 Email: henrik@levkowetz.com David Meyer 1225 Kincaid St Eugene, OR 97403 USA Phone: +1.541.346.1747 Email: dmm@1-4-5.net Appendix A. Working documents (This section should be removed by the RFC editor before publication) The current working documents for this draft are available at this web site: http://ietf.levkowetz.com/drafts/proto/wgchair-doc-shepherding/ Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 13] Internet-Draft Working Group Chair Document Shepherding March 2005 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights 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; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr. 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Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Falk, et al. Expires September 16, 2005 [Page 14]