Since we have an urgent need for PSI to know what versioning scheme to use
I've told Dave to go ahead with <major>.<minor>.<revision> as this had
fair consensus on the call yesterday. If we transition to a different
scheme Dave will need to know asap.
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Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
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"Farrell, Lee" <Lee.Farrell at cda.canon.com>
Sent by: owner-pwg at pwg.org
01/31/2003 12:04 PM
To: "PWG (E-mail)" <pwg at pwg.org>
cc:
Subject: FW: PWG> PWG Process
Excellent commentary, Bill.
Couldn't agree more. I especially like the idea of the "date
distinguishing scheme" for the working drafts. That way, we're not trying
to overload version numbers as a measure of how close we are to being a
standard. [This should help avoid the problem of Marketing groups
deciding whether or not to wait until a version 1 stamp is established.
All that is critical is whether the document has the title, "Proposed
Standard," "Draft Standard," or "Standard."
Three stages of progression. Three milestones for news releases.
lee
-----Original Message-----
From: Wagner,William [mailto:WWagner at NetSilicon.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 2:15 PM
To: Harry Lewis; pwg at pwg.org
Subject: RE: PWG> PWG Process
I agree with Harry that there was significant effort put into preparing
the current process. The effort should first be to understand and, if
necessary clarify the presently defined process rather than to change it.
Also, questions of document format, although important, must be separated
from the standards development process discussion.
There were several points brought out in the plenary, and since I have not
yet released the minutes, it may be germane to state them separately. They
are not necessarily law, but they seem reasonable.
1. one must distinguish between versions of a standard and versions of a
document. It is quite possible to have, for example two versions of a
protocol, each fully documented and each implementable. However, for
document versions that deal with corrections, additional information, new
insights, each version will obsolete the previous version. There have been
some good suggestions on keeping track of document versions, particularly
those that including the date in the title. I suggest that work on
different versions of a standard be treated as distinct activities. That
is, if we have Printing Protocol, that has advanced to Draft Standard,
and we have a need for and have either created a new charter or revised
charter for Printing Protocol 2, then Printing Protocol 2 becomes the
title, it advances though the document stages as a separate project, and
it is distinct from any version of Printing Protocol.
2. The levels of standards are defined. (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard
and Standard). The steps to reach each stage are defined. There is an
approval process for each stage. Once a document is reaches a certain
stage, it cannot be revised or updated as a document at that stage; that
would violate the sense of the approval process. A new series of working
drafts can be done for the next stage. Or the document can be invalidated
in which case a new project may be started at the lowest level to address
the fatal flaw.
3. The interim documents to reach a standard of a given level are working
drafts of a document to eventually become a standard at that level. That
is, an interim document of a Printing Protocol Draft Standard should
include in the title Working Draft - Printing Protocol Draft Standard. It
can be assumed that there will be multiple working drafts and therefore,
conceptually, versions of the working draft. I suggest that the date
distinguishing scheme be used for these working drafts.
Bill Wagner
-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 4:12 PM
To: pwg at pwg.org
Subject: PWG> PWG Process
The SM f2f discussion of PWG Process was quite painful. It is obvious
there are a multitude of varying perspectives on how to conduct the
progression of a standards specification. We opened the process topic
because we realized some conflicting information and need for
clarification in our document. I don't have a problem citing other
organizations in search of "best practice" but I would like us to consider
applying newfound reason to clarify our process, not redefine it!
Our existing process distinguishes the key stages of Chartering,
Proposing, Specifying, Implementing and Maintaining an industry standard.
It recognizes supporting documents for this activity such as White Papers,
Working Drafts and Standards. It also acknowledges activities such as
Brainstorming, Requirements gathering, prototyping, implementing and
testing.
The process, as written, is an attempt to organize these activities and
supporting documents in such a way that streamlines the progression from
concept to final standard... something we hadn't seen in other venues. One
of the key elements of the existing process is that there are ONLY 3 LAST
CALLS. Each last call (if passed) makes a distinct transition to a more
stable level of the standard. This is signified by the STATUS (reflected
in the name) of the standard... not the version. Versioning was not
discussed in the current PWG process (which is a flaw) but was assumed to
be a linear progression on the working drafts that supported the standard
progression.
Several ideas for updating our process were floated in the phone
conference today. I am not opposed to updating the process... if one thing
was proven by today's call it is that there is very little agreement on
how the standard should be interpreted. I do feel compelled to remind that
a great deal of similar discussion went into creation of the current
process. I do wonder how much effort we are likely to expend only to come
up with a process with new naming and versioning that diagrams out to
nearly what we have, today.
I recommend anyone who has a proposal which they were trying to hash out
in the call but who feels like, perhaps, their point did not get
assimilated or would like to expose their concepts to a wider audience, go
ahead and describe your idea here, for discussion on the PWG.org reflector
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Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
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