Internet DRAFT - draft-farrel-how-much-ad-work
draft-farrel-how-much-ad-work
Network Working Group A. Farrel
Internet-Draft Old Dog Consulting
Intended status: Informational R. Salz
Expires: 18 July 2024 Akamai Technologies
15 January 2024
How is the Area Director Workload Made Up?
draft-farrel-how-much-ad-work-00
Abstract
Anecdotally, every IESG complains about the Area Director (AD)
workload, and says that it takes the first full term to understand
the job. Empirically, the AD workload is high sometimes causing
backlogs in processing of Internet-Drafts and stressing the ADs.
After some discussions in the GENDISPATCH working group and arising
from an Internet-Draft postulating changes that might reduce the AD
workload, several ADs reported some data on how they spent their time
in a few weeks chosen at random. This document collates that data
and presents it for information.
This document does not attempt to draw any conclusions from the
limited data currently available, and there is no intention to
publish this document as an RFC.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Status information for this document may be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-farrel-how-much-AD-work/.
Discussion of this document takes place on the GENDISPATCH Working
Group mailing list (mailto:gendispatch@ietf.org), which is archived
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Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 18 July 2024.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Background to Description of AD Workload . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. NEWTON BoF Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Reports from Current ADs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Martin Duke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Warren Kumari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2.1. 1st and 2nd August, 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2.2. 24th to 30th September, 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.3. 1st to 7th October, 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.4. 8th to 14th October, 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2.5. 22nd to 28th October, 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3. Roman Danyliw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1. Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8.1. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
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1. Introduction
Anecdotally, every IESG complains about the Area Director (AD)
workload, and says that it takes the first full term to understand
the job. Empirically, the AD workload is high sometimes causing
backlogs in processing of Internet-Drafts and stressing the ADs.
After some discussions in the GENDISPATCH working group and arising
from [I-D.rsalz-less-ad-work] which postulated ways to reduce the AD
workload, several ADs reported some data on how they spent their time
in a few weeks chosen at random. That data cannot be taken as
representative, and it would be wrong to draw firm conclusions from
it, but this document collates the data and presents it for
information.
This document does not attempt to draw any conclusions from the
limited data currently available, but by collecting and presenting it
we may trigger more focused discussion and additional reports of time
usage from which it might be possible to make assertions.
There is no intention to publish this document as an RFC.
2. Background to Description of AD Workload
[I-D.rsalz-less-ad-work] presented the evolution of the job
description for ADs as provided by the IESG to the IETF Nominations
Committee (NomCom) and used by the NomCom to advise applicants for AD
positions. That document noted that as far back as 2013 (the first
year for which the job description is preserved in the datatracker)
the description said:
The basic IESG activities can consume between 15-40 hours a week.
In 2017, this description changed to:
The ability to contribute more time is useful, but if the NomCom
should pick a few ADs who can only do 15 hrs/week on a routine
basis, the IESG can cope with that.
In 2018, this changed to the following more general statement:
Many ADs allocate 15 hours or more per week...
But a more descriptive message was also added to the 2018 job
description:
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Enough time must be allocated to manage approximately 10 to 15
working groups, [and] to read on the order of 500 pages of
internet-drafts every two weeks
The 2023 NomCom used the following information in the job
description:
Basic IESG activities can consume significant time during a
typical non-meeting week. Enough time must be allocated to manage
approximately 10 to 15 working groups, review up to 400 pages of
Internet Drafts every two weeks, and follow up on document
processing tasks. Many ADs allocate a minimum of 15 hours per
week to such tasks. Some ADs have been able to combine
significant other responsibilities with an AD role and/or delegate
work to area directorates, while others put a larger proportion of
their hours into AD responsibilities. A personal commitment is
critical.
The time commitment varies by Area and by month, with the most
intense periods immediately before and during IETF meetings. ADs
during their first year tend to spend more time per week on AD
work. Practices vary widely between IESG members, however. Most
IESG members also participate in additional IETF leadership
activities, further increasing the time commitment for those
individuals.
2.1. NEWTON BoF Proposal
In 2023, leading up to IETF-118, and considering three Internet-
Drafts ([I-D.rsalz-less-ad-work],
[I-D.nottingham-iesg-review-workload], and
[I-D.eggert-ietf-chair-may-delegate]) a proposal was sumbitted for a
Birds of a Feather (BoF) meeting named "Now Exactly What are they
spending Time ON" (NEWTON).
The NEWTON BoF proposal observed some of the concerns about IESG
workload and said:
In order to better understand the scope of this problem, we need
to determine what the time commitment is for ADs. And, if this is
a significant amount of time that effects delivery in the role or
constrains nominations, then it will be desirable to further
understand how the total time breaks down into component tasks so
that it is possible to consider how to reballance, mitigate, or
reduce the workload if the time spent is not matching the
community's priorities.
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The first step in this process is to spend one IETF cycle (i.e.,
roughly four months) collecting data from the IESG. Although a
single cycle will not cover a full year's events and therefore be
skewed, this period should give reasonable insight into the annual
working practices without delaying for a full year. If the IESG
prefers, the data collected can be anonymized as much as
reasonably possible so that no AD need feel embarrassed about how
hard they work or how much of their spare time they dedicate to
the role.
Although the IESG chose not to pursue this approach, several of the
ADs did record and report how they spent their time for a few weeks.
This information is presented in the sections that follow. If more
information is gathered in the future, this document may be updated.
3. Reports from Current ADs
3.1. Martin Duke
Martin Duke (in the fourth year of his term as Transport AD) reported
to the GENDISPATCH mailing list on 19th September 2023 as follows:
I am not including the time I spend as a normal IETF participant:
writing drafts, participating in WGs I would attend anyway, and
attending IETF plenary meetings.
These percentages are a rough fraction of a 40-hour work-week,
averaged over the year. I did a time card for my own information
three years ago, long since lost, but this is an estimate based on
a little reflection on the tasks I perform.
- 8% - Meetings: Telechats, a weekly sync with my co-AD,
occasional one-offs for IEEE syncs, BOF reviews, etc.
- 2% - WG management - finding chairs, occasional 1-on-1s,
chartering, errata, BoFs, monitoring mailing lists, etc.
Personally, I tend not to wade into WG document threads very
much, to keep my perspective clear for the AD review. Others
may differ. There was a period I spent about 5% of my time
clearing the errata backlog, but that is long past.
- In transport, we do not get many BoFs. I have also been
fortunate in having great WG chairs that can handle most
problems, so thank you to them.
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- 3% - AD [document] Evaluation -- With only 5 WGs, I do not have
many of these. I take these really seriously and a review
usually takes the better part of a day, sometimes more. Other
ADs almost certainly spend more time because they have many
more documents.
- 3% - Standards process management: actively participating in
policy work -- IESG statements and such -- is essentially
optional. I have gotten interested in certain initiatives. It
is certainly possible to spend more or less time on this.
- 2% - Retreats. These meetings essentially take a full week,
but are happening only once per year. You could put this in
the "standards process management" bin if you like.
- 10% - IESG review - Until about a year ago, this consumed
substantially more time for me, as much as 40-50%. For multiple
reasons, I've trimmed this down to focus on documents with
transport implications (which is not many of them). In the
context of any particular review, I've reduced my focus to
major problems and any transport issues. For what it's worth,
I don't think this scaling back has meaningfully reduced my
impact on the IETF.
For most ADs, a much larger percentage of ballots have issues
pertaining to their area of expertise. If I applied the same
criteria to being SEC AD, I would probably be spending *at least*
40% of my time on balloting.
Martin summarised this as follows:
In summary, I'm spending about 25%-30% of my work-week [10 to 12
hours] on AD-specific stuff. When I started, it was over 50% [20+
hours], mostly because I was much more thorough on IESG ballots.
An additional chunk of time is spent on being an IETF participant.
Although I participate in more policy work than the bare minimum,
I would say that this level of commitment is pretty close to a
lower bound for *competent* execution of the duties because:
- Transport is small: few WGs, not that many documents, largely
irrelevant to most IESG ballots.
- I am experienced: I've formed an opinion about what matters and
have stopped doing stuff that I don't think matters.
Martin added some closing thoughts.
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No one asked me, but I don't think eliminating AD tasks that take
<5% of the week is going to make a difference in recruiting: it's
still a matter of asking your manager to be removed from some
dayjob tasks. The real money is in:
1. eliminating lots of working groups;
2. having way more ADs; and/or
3. fundamentally changing the nature of IESG balloting.
All of these have significant drawbacks.
I will also note that we historically have plenty of AD candidates
for some areas (SEC and RTG) and almost none in others (TSV). It
is apparent to me that this is not just about workload and there
are other factors at play, and the community would benefit from
exploring these before taking a sledgehammer to the generic AD job
description.
WG management and AD Evaluation are the most important things I do
and should not be abridged.
If there's one place I regret not spending more time, it's
adoption calls in my WGs. There are several instances where I
have AD-evaluated a document that isn't highly objectionable, but
that I don't think is a particularly useful addition to the RFC
series.
3.2. Warren Kumari
Warren Kumari (in the seventh year of his term as Operations and
Management AD) made several distinct reports.
3.2.1. 1st and 2nd August, 2023
On 21st September 2023, Warren reported to the GENDISPATCH mailing
list how he had spent his time over two days. He said:
Note: I only did this for 2 days, shortly after a meeting - this
means that it isn't hugely representative of an "average" week,
but it hopefully at least give a flavor. One thing that I
discovered while collecting this data is just how much overhead it
involved. The context switching of "Do something, record
something, do something, record something" was crushing. It was
also very unclear how I would count almost all of the items.
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Over these two days, Warren reported two principal categories of IETF
time:
IETF email and slack conversations. Total time spent: 8 hours 23
minutes.
Assorted minor IETF tasks. Total time spent: 27 minutes.
The time Warren spent during the two days can be summed up as:
Total work time : 20 hours 49 minutes
IETF work time : 8 hours 50 minutes
Percentage IETF time : 42.5%
Making a lot of assumptions from these figures we might determine
that Warren has a working week of roughly 52 hours, and that he might
spend 22 hours a week on IETF work.
3.2.2. 24th to 30th September, 2023
On October 3rd, Warren reported to the GENDISPATCH list giving
figures for a whole callendar week generated using a new tracking
tool.
IETF Email and Misc : 20 hours 31 minutes
IETF Document Progression : 2 hours 5 minutes
IETF Meetings : 3 hours 21 minutes
IETF Misc : 33 minutes
IETF NOC : 2 hours 46 minutes
The time Warren spent during the week can be summed up as:
Total work time : 50 hours
IETF work time : 29 hours 16 minutes
Percentage IETF time : 76%
3.2.3. 1st to 7th October, 2023
On October 8th, Warren reported a further week of work in an email to
the GENDISPATCH list.
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IETF Email and Misc : 19 hours 53 minutes
IETF Document Progression : 25 minutes
IETF Document Review : 3 hours 50 minutes
IESG Discussions : 2 hours 30 minutes
IETF Misc : 10 minutes
IETF NOC : 1 hour 42 minutes
The time Warren spent during the week can be summed up as:
Total work time : 48 hours 41 minutes
IETF work time : 28 hours 30 minutes
Percentage IETF time : 58.5%
3.2.4. 8th to 14th October, 2023
On October 17th, Warren again reported a week of work in an email to
the GENDISPATCH list.
IETF Email and Misc : 20 hours 6 minutes
IETF Document Progression : 3 hours 59 minutes
IETF Meetings : 3 hours 13 minutes
IETF NoC : 2 hours 57 minutes
IETF Technology Deep Dives : 0 hours 59 minutes
IETF Misc Tasks : 4 hours 8 minutes
The time Warren spent during the week can be summed up as:
Total work time : 67 hours 20 minutes
IETF work time : 35 hours 22 minutes
Percentage IETF time : 52.5%
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3.2.5. 22nd to 28th October, 2023
On October 30th, Warren made a final report of a week of work in an
email to the GENDISPATCH list.
IETF Email and Misc : 23 hours 5 minutes
IETF Document Progression : 3 hours 12 minutes
IETF Document Review : 2 hours 0 minutes
IETF WG Management : 3 hours 23 minutes
The time Warren spent during the week can be summed up as:
Total work time : 72 hours 59 minutes
IETF work time : 25 hours 5 minutes
Percentage IETF time : 34%
3.3. Roman Danyliw
Roman Danyliw (in the fifth year of his term as Security AD) reported
on how he works as an AD in emails sent to the SAAG and GENDISPATCH
mailing lists at the start of October 2023. The emails point to a
github page that provides a detailed description of Roman's working
practices as Security AD, and explains how the workload varies and
can be balanced with other tasks.
While this document will be very valuable to people trying to better
understand what it takes to be an AD in general and a Security AD in
particular, it doesn't give a clear breakdown of the amount of work
time that he spends on the tasks, with only a few specific tasks
having timings associated with them.
However, he usefully says:
Starting with a 50 - 60% IETF effort budget is not an unrealistic
baseline commitment for the SEC area realizing that the load
surges and ebb some.
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4. Summary
Martin Duke, as an experienced AD in a small area (TSV) found that he
could do the AD job, including contributing to some of the background
IESG tasks, on 10 to 12 hours a week. But he noted that as an
inexperienced AD (still in the small area), he would expect the job
to take more than 20 hours a week. We should note, however, that his
figures are based on an educated estimate and the memory of a
timecard he no longer has.
Warren's initial report of two days is notable in that they come in
the period after an IETF meeting when ADs are often catching up with
email and half-finished conversations. It is also remarkable that
those days contain no document reviews.
Warren's second report may give a more complete picture showing
almost 30 hours of his 50 hour working week devoted to IETF tasks,
including some time progressing documents.
Warren's third report also gives a better picture showing 28.5 hours
of his 49 hour week spent on IETF tasks, including document reviews
and IESG discussions.
Warren's fourth report shows him spending 52.5% of his working week
on IETF tasks, but this is not a good indication because most would
consider a 67 hour working week to be excessive. Thus, the total of
35.3 hours spent on IETF work is far more indicative.
At 72 hours worked in the week in Warren's final report, we must
consider Warren to be working exceptionally long hours. That he only
spent 34% of his working week on IETF activity is almost meaningless!
The valuable figure is that he used 25 hours on IETF tasks.
While Roman Danyliw did not give any estimates of work hours, if we
assume a "normal" working week of 45 hours, he is suggesting that a
Security AD could expect to spend around 22.5 to 27 hours a week on
IETF tasks, with some variations as work-load varies.
4.1. Aggregation
It is not easy to make an aggregated view of how AD time is spent
from the results reported so far, but it is possible to aggregate the
30 days reported by Warren Kumari. This is possible because of the
consistent cateories that he used in his reports, and could be
valuable because of the number of days recorded.
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It is, however, worth noting that, as observed by Warren, the
definitions of the work categories are not precise and some
activities do not sit clearly in one pot or another. Nevertheless,
this gives a first level understanding.
IETF email and slack conversations : 91 hours 58 minutes
IETF Document Progression : 9 hours 41 minutes
IETF Document Review : 5 hours 50 minutes
IETF WG Management : 3 hours 23 minutes
IETF Meetings : 6 hours 34 minutes
IESG Discussions : 2 hours 30 minutes
IETF Misc Tasks : 5 hours 18 minutes
IETF NOC : 7 hours 25 minutes
IETF Technology Deep Dives : 0 hours 59 minutes
The time Warren spent during the 30 days he reported can be summed up
as:
Total work time : 259 hours 49 minutes
IETF work time : 127 hours 3 minutes
Percentage IETF time : 49%
Average working day (7 day week) : 8 hours 39 minutes
Average IETF work per day (7 day week) : 4 hours 14 minutes
Average working day (5 day week) : 11 hours 48 minutes
Average IETF work per day (5 day week) : 5 hours 46 minutes
5. Security Considerations
This document is a collation of material previosly posted to IETF
mailing lists. It makes no security or privacy changes.
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6. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
7. Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the useful discussion in GENDISPATCH meetings
and on the GENDISPATCH mailing list.
Special thanks to Martin Duke, Warren Kumari, and Roman Danyliw for
recording and reporting how they spent their time.
8. References
8.1. Informative References
[I-D.eggert-ietf-chair-may-delegate]
Eggert, L., "The IETF Chair May Delegate", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-eggert-ietf-chair-may-
delegate-01, 8 September 2023,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-eggert-ietf-
chair-may-delegate-01>.
[I-D.nottingham-iesg-review-workload]
Nottingham, M., "IESG Document Review Expectations: Impact
on AD Workload", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
nottingham-iesg-review-workload-00, 30 March 2023,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-nottingham-
iesg-review-workload-00>.
[I-D.rsalz-less-ad-work]
Salz, R. and A. Farrel, "Making Less Work for Area
Directors", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-rsalz-
less-ad-work-00, 22 June 2023,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-rsalz-less-
ad-work-00>.
Authors' Addresses
Adrian Farrel
Old Dog Consulting
Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk
Rich Salz
Akamai Technologies
Email: rsalz@akamai.com
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