ACTION-44 Coordiantion Responsiblities

All,
I accepted that ACTION to Draft text on coordiantion responsibility for the process document and edit guide to begin collecting best practicres for same<http://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/actions/44>. In pursuing this ACTION, I reviewed the current requirements for "coordination". Those that are not concerned with Coordination Groups are copied below. There seem to be three entities tasked with coordination of W3C's work: the Team, Working Group Chairs and (for Web Architecture) the TAG. In that case of Working Groups, their charters SHOULD specify how its work will be coordinated with Groups which depend on it or on which it depends. The Team is responsible for coordinating Liaisons with external groups and the overall coordination of the W3C.

It is not clear to me that any additional text is required. The place that it seems to be important to add a link to Best Practices is for the text in section 6.2.6 below, "The charter SHOULD set expectations about how COORDINATION with those groups will take place;" Perhaps it would be useful to add (following the semicolon), "see XXX for possible approaches and", where XXX is the section in the "Guide" that has the accumulated best practices and would be a link.

Other than that, I think the current text suffices. The Team is responsible for all coordination; the WG Chairs are responsible for coordinating their WG, both in terms of its work and its dependencies identified in its Charter. To say more seems like micro-managing.

Steve Zilles

Current References to "Coordination" (other than Coordination Groups) in Process2014. To make the references easy to find, each has been converted to all caps.
2 Members, Advisory Committee, Team, Advisory Board, Technical Architecture Group

W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C Member<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#Members> organizations provide resources to this end, and the W3C Team<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#Team> provides the technical leadership and organization to coordinate the effort.

2.4 Technical Architecture Group (TAG)

Created in February 2001, the mission of the TAG is stewardship of the Web architecture. There are three aspects to this mission:
1.    to document and build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary;
2.    to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG;
3.    to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C.
6.1 Requirements for All Working, Interest, and Coordination Groups

Each group MUST have a charter. Requirements for the charter depend on the group type. All group charters MUST be public (even if other proceedings of the group areMember-only<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#Member-only>). Existing charters that are not yet public MUST be made public when next revised or extended (with attention to changing confidentiality level<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#confidentiality-change>).

Each group MUST have a Chair (or co-Chairs) to coordinate the group's tasks.

6.2.6 Working Group and Interest Group Charters

A Working Group or Interest Group charter MUST include all of the following information.

  *   ...
  *   Any dependencies of this group on other groups within or outside of W3C. For example, one group's charter might specify that another group is expected to review a technical report before it can become a Recommendation. For any dependencies, the charter MUST specify when required deliverables are expected from the other groups. The charter SHOULD set expectations about how coordination with those groups will take place; see the section on liaisons with other organizations<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#Liaisons>. Finally, the charter SHOULD specify expected conformance to the deliverables of the other groups;

10 Liaisons

W3C uses the term "liaison" to refer to coordination of activities with a variety of organizations, through a number of mechanisms ranging from very informal (e.g., an individual from another organization participates in a W3C Working Group, or just follows its work) to mutual membership, to even more formal agreements. Liaisons are not meant to substitute for W3C membership.

All liaisons MUST be coordinated by the Team due to requirements for public communication; patent, copyright, and other IPR policies; confidentiality agreements; and mutual membership agreements.