Re: Time commitments for MIB review

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

>>>>> On Sat, 6 Mar 2004, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
Bert> - The IESG (in general) and I (specifically for MIB reviews) have
Bert>   the experience that is we post a "who volunteers for review of X"
Bert>   to the review-group (like mreview) mailing list, that that most
Bert>   of the time does NOT work. Occasionaly it does, but not very often.
Bert> - Asking someone specific to review does work better.
Bert> - The RTG directorate has an agreement that the ADs can just assign 
Bert>   a document to a specific member of the directorate and that person
Bert>   is then responsible to respond with a review within 2 weeks.
Bert> 
Bert> So I am wondering if that RTG agreement could work for us as well.

Bert, I apologize for not responding earlier.  I've been in crunch
mode at my day job owing to an impending shipment deadline, and I
have not been able to work off my e-mail backlog until now.

>>>>> On Sun, 7 Mar 2004, Harrington, David wrote:
David> I have concerns about a two-week deadline. My company pays my
David> salary and sponsors my participation, and often work due for the
David> company must take precedence over mib doctor reviews. I would
David> have difficulty guaranteeing a two-week turnaround whenever you
David> want it. This is especially true for mibs that had no mib
David> technical advisor to ensure that a mib is not poorly designed
David> and then a huge poorly designed mib is presented for mib doctor
David> review. The mib doctor task for a mib that needs massive changes
David> is much more difficult than a review for a well-designed mib.
David> The Printer MIB jumps to mind, and recently the DHCP mib
David> warranted a massive overhaul.

I would like to echo Dave Harrington's concern that a 2-week deadline
is not always possible to meet.  Sometimes it is possible to do that
when the MIB module is well-designed -- a few years ago I was able to
turn around the ifTopN module in 48 hours -- but that is not always
the case.  You might recall that I took several weeks to do a
comprehensive review of the optical interface MIB, and I had a lot
of time to spend on that one since I was unemployed at the time.

Bert> I have a long backlog of MIB documents that need MIB Doctor review.
Bert> Over the next week or so, I would like to start assigning documents
Bert> to the various MIB Doctors to try and clean out that backlog.
Bert> 
Bert> Comments? Thoughts? Other ideas to make the MIB review process 
Bert> go faster?

David> How about setting a minimum yearly commitment to remain a mib
David> doctor? I'm not sure how many mibs are produced yearly or how
David> many mib doctor reviews you want for each, but I see little
David> problem with committing to perform, say, six reviews per year.

I think I could live with this, idea subject to the proviso that
there will be times (such as now) when I will have to beg off owing
to heavy-duty outside committments.

David> I have concerns about being "assigned" mibs. It is much easier
David> for me to justify the time to perform mib doctor review if it
David> relates to my company's business.

In my case I have to do all the reviews I do on my own time since my
current employer does not not do anything related to SNMP and MIBs.
But I am still better qualified to review some MIBS rather than
others.

One idea that comes to mind ... when it comes time for a MIB doctor
to do a review, allow him or her to choose from among the ones
that currently require review.  Of course there is nothing wrong
with stating your preference when you make the request.

Mike