See also

• W3C Process Document
  • Introduction section is a good one-page summary
• Process Diagram (png / svg)
• The Art of Consensus
  • Collected wisdom of W3C Group Chairs and other collaborators
• The Seven Sins of Deadly Meetings
• Dan Connolly, W3C Process: A Means to an End

These slides: http://www.w3.org/2008/xmlsec/w3c101

W3C Core Values

• Consensus
• Interoperability
• Good Design
• Quality

Nuts and Bolts: The Process

Process is based on experience. For each rule in the process, there is a story of what happened before that rule was there.

Steps:

• Preparation
• Working Group, toward Last Call
• Last Call
• Candidate Recommendation
• Proposed Recommendation
• Recommendation (champagne!)

Working Group Mechanics

Tools

• mailing lists
• teleconferences and face-to-face meetings, supported by Internet Relay Chat
• Issue and action tracking

... and Culture.

• accountability -- document, explain and respond
• openness and public visibility

Mailing list use

• public-xmlsec (Archive)
  • publicly visible archive
  • technical content goes here
  • see "openness and public visibility"
• member-xmlsec (Archive)
  • content on this list is W3C member-confidential
  • administrivia go here
  • interactions with member-confidential groups go here

Tool support: Using IRC in meetings

Multimodal Interactions

• We meet in #xmlsec on irc.w3.org, port 6665.
• Our robotic guests: Zakim, RRSAgent, trackbot
• Zakim is connected to the phone bridge
  • Queue management: "q+ to suggest switchig to Jabber", "q-", "q?", "ack"
  • Muting and unmuting: "zakim, mute Thomas", "zakim, unmute Thomas"
  • Associating your IRC nick name with a phone identity: "zakim, I am Thomas"
• RRSAgent helps with minutes
• trackbot helps with action item tracking and issues

Quick and dirty minutes, and how we do them: RRSAgent

It is better to have dirty minutes quickly than to have perfect minutes late.

• Minutes are due 24h-48h after a meeting
• Scribe role rotates among non-chair WG members
• RRSAgent enables scribing on IRC
  • See instructions
• RRSagent auto-generates minutes; link and plain text are sent to public mailing list
  • unless group decides to keep part of deliberations member confidential
  • that's dealt with by exception handling

Action tracking: trackbot

• Trackbot is tracker's eyes and ears on IRC
  • "ACTION: Frederick to request Last Call"
  • <trackbot> Created ACTION-171 - Frederick to request Last Call [on Frederick Hirsch - due 2006-06-30].
• Tracker also eavesdrops on public e-mail list
  • ACTION-171, ACTION-172, ... is a magic word. Tracker will automatically link all messages that mention this keyword to the corresponding action.
  • ISSUE-815 works the same way
• Web interface
  • public interface is read-only
  • member-confidential interface is read-write

Issue tracking: bugzilla

• We've got space on W3C's public bugzilla
• Going to imitate WS-Policy's issues process

Decision Making

The Process on Consensus

Consensus is a core value of W3C. To promote consensus, the W3C process requires Chairs to ensure that groups consider all legitimate views and objections, and endeavor to resolve them, whether these views and objections are expressed by the active participants of the group or by others (...). Decisions MAY be made during meetings (face-to-face or distributed) as well as through email. ...

1. Consensus: A substantial number of individuals in the set support the decision and nobody in the set registers a Formal Objection. Individuals in the set may abstain. Abstention is either an explicit expression of no opinion or silence by an individual in the set. ...

2. Dissent: At least one individual in the set registers a Formal Objection.

A "Formal Objection" means that a party wants the Director to review a technical decision at the next transition checkpoint.

Good Standing: Participation Expectations

The Process on Consensus, cont'd

"By default, the set of individuals eligible to participate in a decision is the set of group participants in Good Standing."

The Process on Standing

A participant MAY be declared in Bad Standing in any of the following circumstances:

• the individual has missed more than one of the last three distributed meetings.
• the individual has missed more than one of the last three face-to-face meetings.
• the individual has not provided deliverables in a timely fashion twice in sequence.
• the individual has not followed the conflict of interest policy by disclosing information to the rest of the group.

Patent Policy

• Goal: RF commitments to Recommendations
• Means: Policy, tied to Process milestones
  • "Gentlemen, leave your guns at the door." - unnamed AC rep
  • Default: No disclosures, but commitments.
  • Exclusion opportunities triggered at various process milestones; your AC reps will get the e-mail
  • If exclusion, then PAG.

Last Call: "We think we're done"

• Starts with Working Group decision that all issues are addressed
• Formally document dependencies
• Formally address all issues

Candidate Recommendation "Implementations, Please!"

• starts with Director's Decision that Last Call achieved sufficient review, consensus, etc.
• formally document that all features are implemented
• exit criteria, e.g.
  • each feature, issue should have a test
  • two implementations should pass all tests
• formally address all issues

Proposed Recommendation

• seek official endorsement from W3C membership
• formally address all issues
• then...

Recommendation

Undust the bottles!

These slides

http://www.w3.org/2008/xmlsec/w3c101