1. Thoughts on The Principle of “Divide and Conquer”
Dean Willis March 2006
A Summary of Discussions on the SIPish Mailing Lists

2. The Complaints
Stuff takes “too long” to progress through working groups, milestones missed
People only work for the 3 weeks preceding each meeting
Hard to get enough review
Authors don’t make changes quickly
Priorities not clear
Chairs not doing enough management

3. The Suggestions
Fire the chairs (Please!) or get them to manage more aggressively, providing structured guidance for reviews
Have more interim meetings
Exclude more work, set priorities
Make a directorate
Re-divide the problem space over a set of rescoped, mission-focused working groups.

4. The History
SIP has been running since 1999, 23 full or interim meetings, 46 RFCs, 4 ADs, and 5 chairs so far
SIPPING spawned in 2001 to act as a “kidney” for SIP and set priorities, 17 meetings, 32 RFCs, 2 ADs, and 4 chairs so far
Both groups tried formal “design teams” as sub-working groups, with chairs, their own web pages, and so on. Failed to thrive in IETF process
New work keeps showing up.

5. Observations
We have two sessions for SIP and SIPPING at each IETF, and have done so for years.
The limit on what gets done seems to be how hard the AD and chairs work at any given time.
Reviewers are limited , but we exhaust management cycles before worker cycles.
Our current open charters work only because they’ve been held continuously by one anchor.
PROTO moves work from ADs to chairs.
I wanted an interim but didn’t get it done.

6. Proposal Split both SIP and SIPPING working groups
4 new narrowly-chartered WGs
8 total chairs
Expect chairs to manage aggressively
Form an RAI or SIP Directorate to help coordinate mission, do cross-group review
Hold more interim meetings

7. Directorate? Alternatives: RAI Area directorate SIP Directorate
RAI Working Group

8. Proposed Group Split SIPPING
Usage of SIP (examples, TISPAN howto, etc.)
Requirements and Work Assignment
SIP
Maintenance and Wrap of SIP 2.0 Roadmap Documents
Forward-looking work like SAML, E2M, Fixing the 3261 Proxy Routing Bug