end plans for SOA-RAF

This is one of the agenda items and I thought it might be useful to provide an unusual approach in order to get us thinking.

The underlying assumption is we do not have the cycles or resources to complete all the unfinished sections we believe to be important for the RAF. One end state is a Committee Spec where we have things at various levels of completeness. I consider this to be an unattractive option because I think that some good work will be overshadowed by the portions that are still weak. If everything in the document was at a consistently high level of completion and some areas just weren’t addressed, I think that would be acceptable. An uneven document is less so.

An alternative I’d like to propose, though not fully worked out, may be the following. Let us re-couch the RAF as a collection of expositions on various aspects of SOA. Some of these have been through significant review and can be identified as something like RAF Key Aspects. Other areas that are less developed can be identified as RAF Aspects under Development (RAF-D). Areas where we have said little can be RAF Aspects for Consideration (RAF-C). The process going forward would be to keep the TC together as a forum to keep developing these areas as resources and interest warrant. However, there would not be weekly meetings and much of the work going forward would be done by individuals or small groups. For example, white papers such as the one on Willingness that Dave Ellis and I are supposed to write could begin as a short collection of key thoughts under a RAF-C. As we have time to further develop our thoughts, this could advance to a RAF-D. The RAF-D and RAF-C phases would not require TC review and approval, although comments would always be encouraged. It would, however, take a TBD approval process (and likely a meeting of the whole) to advance to a RAF Key Aspect and there would likely be TC action if there was significant heartburn with something else that had been written.

I believe the advantage of this approach is we keep together a forum and a product that can grow and can encourage others to participate. We can continue to grow material as experience with SOA grows but with a low level of effort from the group as a whole. It also is not an end state where things are left permanently hanging.

This idea is not completely thought out, so there is room for improvement. However, if we do this at the level of Committee Spec, I don’t believe we run afoul of OASIS process and can continue advancement of a product that the organization can point to with a continuing sense of accomplishment.

Again, this is something out of left field but it can hopefully stir some creative options.

Talk with you all in 13 hrs.

Ken

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Dr. Kenneth Laskey

MITRE Corporation, M/S H305 phone: 703-983-7934

7515 Colshire Drive fax: 703-983-1379

McLean VA 22102-7508

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