Re: draft-klensin-overload-00.txt

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>]

--On 22. juni 2003 19:14 -0400 Scott W Brim <swb@employees.org> wrote:

> We've been worried about the number of working groups since the concept
> of working groups was created (somewhere around 1989).
is it that new? :-)

> One question is
> how big we "need" to be (to cover the needs of our constituents), but
> the other is how big can we get without losing effectiveness.
I think these are two good questions.

To my mind, when we redesign the way we do WG management, we should make 
sure the last number is a comfortable number larger than the first - that 
is, when we have all the WGs we really need now, we should still feel 
comfortable with adding another 5 or 10 because some new areas have 
attracted interest and are within the IETF's competence to "do right".

Of course, we need mechanisms that prevent the IETF from growing until 
management is a problem again - but I've never been comfortable with the 
idea that our management structure should govern what technology we take 
on; that's just not the Right Thing.

(btw, I think the "need to be", given our current technology reach, is 
(guesstimate) somewhere on the order of 100.... but the way we manage WGs 
currently, that means we need to keep about 200 "active", because half our 
WGs are in some variant of FIN_WAIT, getting the last few pieces done, or 
just waiting for someone to put them out of their misery - and that might 
be a more proper problem for COACH to address....)

                    Harald