The W3C Chairs' Guide is intended to help W3C groups get their work done. Ian Jacobs is using this page for a project to modernize the Guide, and make it easier for groups to get work done, and for people to understand how groups operate.

Questions? ij@w3.org

Audience

The principal audience for this resource will be W3C group participants, including chairs, editors, and team contacts. I expect the content will be generally relevant to all types of groups (though some content will only be relevant to some types of groups).

Goals

Make content easier to discover, edit, and flag for review
Make public the home page and linked resources
Shrink the total documentation
Make it easier to maintain
Make it easier to understand the process and operations
This material is also going to serve as training for the Team; don't lose those bits from the project management task force.

Schedule

September

Further refine scope
Review proposed table of contents: Project_Management_Training
Compile list of existing pages in Guide
Review and catalog existing Guide content
- Guidebook URIs first pass evaluation from Coralie
Interview Chairs on what information they need
- draft questions from Olivier

October

Ian to present project to W3C Team
- Ian's introduction to the Team at Global[team-only]
Interview Chairs on what information they need
Review and catalog existing Guide content
31 October: Review proposal in TPAC 2012 breakout. Seek more volunteers.
- Minutes of Breakout: Modern (Chairs) Guidebook

November and December

Prioritize content needs
- Proposed Modern Guide Table of Contents by Ian
Go back to project management task force with various tables of contents (Ian to take to Jeff, Marie, Maria)
Migrate content from Guide and write missing content

January 2013

Announce site to Chairs. Organize chairs meeting?
Continue to update based on feedback

Notes

Content

Use stack-overflow type mechanism for getting questions and answers to good practices?

Editorial Control

Some pages will be the authoritative source of information about workflow or process requirements. We are likely to limit the audience that can edit these. However, it would be good to allow people to annotate these pages, or ask questions in these pages.

Migration

Algorithm:

Is it an operational document governed by the Team?
- If public, then done.
- Otherwise, make public but leave out of wiki
Otherwise
- If in public wiki then done
- Otherwise migrate to public wiki

Maintenance

Many (most?) pages will be maintained by the community.
However, some will include "authoritative" workflow information. These will be maintained by the staff.
Allow users to flag content as out of date
Determine rituals for review of authoritative workflow content (e.g., before each AC meeting)

Views

Who: Chair, editor, Team Contact, AC Rep, test lead, new person
When: new group, rechartering, ending

Past Meetings

Background

Discussions at TPAC 2011 led to several related efforts to improve aspects of W3C's process and operations. Among these are the Advisory Board's work on revising the W3C Process, as well as a task force run by Jeff Jaffe to improve W3C's capacity to deliver specifications according to schedule. Jeff's task force, for example, continues work on a project management training curriculum

Materials to Draw From

Chris Lilley on predicting milestones from project management task force
Strategic management of standards: let everyone know how we manage work from management perspective.
See chairs list discussion about dashboards, memoirs, FAQs, and new chair guides.
See Olivier ideas in particular.
Olivier Faceted Guide: wiki, draft on the web
Art Barstow has a number of cheat sheets we can use.
- Art also has some guidance on clearly communicating publication status (e.g., WebApps PubStatus page).
Project management tools?

Virginie notes

lexique : one sentence definition for all W3C related concepts would be nice
content format : some of the content is in a shape of mail, do we want to keep them as it is, or do we want harmonized content format ?
using the right words : I would see value in mentioning when an action will require W3C validation/endorsement e.g. instead of saying "creating a charter", indicating "requesting charter creation", you know, using a user perspective ...
fil rouge : I would develop the different specifications steps or group life steps into formal steps (e.g. First Public Draft, Last Call, CR, PR, REC ...)
minor stuff : but I am just about to go for it : I would add recommendation related to 'gathering public comment' unless it is demonstrated that sending a mail on one public list is enough :-)
re-minor stuff - missing experience sharing : 'TPAC is the place to be to promote/enrich/mature a WG', 'who are the AC rep' ?

People who have expressed interest

Jeanne Spellman
Art Barstow
Michael Cooper