- From: Patrick Curran <Patrick.Curran@Sun.COM>
- Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 17:14:39 -0800
- To: www-qa-wg@w3.org
QA Working Group Face-to-Face (at NIST Boulder) Tuesday, 21-October-2003, Morning ------------------------------------------------ Scribe: Patrick Curran Attendees: (PC) Patrick Curran (Sun Microsystems) (KD) Karl Dubost (W3C, WG co-chair) (DH) Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C) (LH) Lofton Henderson (CGMO - WG co-chair) (SM) Sandra Martinez (NIST) (LR) Lynne Rosenthal (NIST - IG co-chair) (MS) Mark Skall (NIST) (VV) Vanitha Venkatraman (Sun Microsystems) (OT) Olivier Thereaux (W3C, IG co-chair) Regrets: (DD) Dimitris Dimitriadis (Ontologicon) (AT) Andrew Thackrah (Open Group) Absent: (KG) Kirill Gavrylyuk (Microsoft) Guest: (AR) Alex Rousskov (Measurement Factory) Agenda: http://www.w3.org/QA/2003/10/f2f Summary of new action items AI-20031021-1: LH to talk to Daniel about meeting with Arnaud from IBM to encourage their participation in QAWG AI-20031021-2: KD to speak with Steve Bratt to encourage Microsoft's participation in QAWG AI-20031021-3: PC to follow up with Oracle to encourage their participation in QAWG AI-20031021-4: KD is appointed director of recruiting - he will follow up on recruiting efforts Minutes: 1. Discussion on membership & recruiting General agreement that we need to recruit more members. Brief discussion of possible activities for Advisory Committee meeting (November 2003, Japan). No conclusions. KD: We have no Japanese member in QAWG - could we try to recruit someone? All: we need to encourage more participation generally LH: need to issue a call for participation when we re-charter; this should be more than pro-forma DH: could we get someone from IBM? OT: Boeing may be interested - I am working with them... LH: those of us who are active in "real" working groups should try to recruit from these groups KD: Now that Peter is not participating, will this cause problems for Patrick on TestGL? PC: Yes - let's discuss when we get to Test GL LR: When PC visits NIST, can meet with Mary Brady and review the doc; will get good feedback DH: how will we follow-up on these efforts? 2. Inreach/Outreach OT leads the discussion Definitions: Inreach = working with people inside W3C, Outreach = outside W3C All: We haven't done much inreach since the TP earlier this year. (We have done some reviews.) LR: CC/PP represents a success story. They were reluctant to listen to us initially, but LR reviewed their spec, recruited them and they added a conformance section. OT: Is not sure that they were really committed to QAWG processes. LR: They did address the classes of product, and they re-wrote a section of the spec when it became obvious that it wasn't clear and understandable. DH/LR: The review process is valuable LR: Also reviewed UUAG - they were 95% compliant. This is probably because Iain Jacobs, the spec lead, is very experienced OT: CC/PP has a very long history - several drafts. They thought they were done a year ago. There were already several implementations, yet did not have conformance requirements in spec. Some other WGs who are not so far along do not seem to see the importance of this. DH: We do a lot of reviews, but there isn't much follow-up KD: We are only reviewing Last Calls, yet we could be more effective if we engaged earlier. We don't even have enough resources to do this... MS: Early engagement is good OT: Don't review early drafts - WGs will be resistant LH: It would be better if we reviewed draft before Last Call KD: Re-emphasises that early engagement would help AR: IETF is considering how to improve spec quality. People seem to believe that early review will help. However, this does take more resources. OT: If we agree that early reviews are best, how to track them? Last Calls, CR are announced, but working drafts are not so widely published. MS: We have asked in OpsGL that each WG should be assigning a point of contact. We should ping them. DH: Indeed - if people were following our Ops GLs, we would be OK LR: We should focus on a few WGs, and build up good relationships with them LH: Does IETF have anything like a QAWG? AR: To migrate from draft to RFC specs must be reviewed by "ISG". LH: what would they think of SpecGL? LR: they probably havn't heard of it. There are minimal requirements. Things are changing. ISG gets overloaded with poor-quality submissions. They are discussing how to improve the situation. They are thinking of assigning a group of people who would review drafts. Public list of specs that have been reviewed (by us) will encourage others to participate. LR: It would be good if we published a list of common errors DH: So - what to do? LR: Target a small number of working groups OT: Agreed - target a small number of WGs early PC: Early engagement should focus on OpsGL process stuff rather than reviewing specs KD: This would help to dispel the myth that we use waterfall model OT: Summarizing - in early stages we are trying to influence behaviour rather than review early drafts of specs. DH: We need to work on our communications with WGs. We would be more effective in reviewing Last Calls if we had built up a good working relationship along the way, and had helped them to incorporate good practices. VV: We should assign an individual liaison to work with them. LH: Summarizing - pick a focused subset, assign a contact person in the WG, and a liaison in QAWG AR: Doesn't think that we have resources to assign a dedicated liaison - why not just review their docs? DH: closer relationships will help. LR: sounds like we're trying to do too much... Moving discussion to how we validate our specs LH: all we need is two groups implementing each checkpoint (doesn't have to be one group that implements "several" checkpoints). KD: no - W3C management wants us to demonstrate that two WGs have "good coverage" OT: we must to this if we want our guidelines to become mandatory KD: we must prove the maximum rather than the minimum - it's difficult to recruit - he needs help AR: should work with new WGs that are just forming KD: mail is not effective - need phone or face-to-face KD: there may be an opportunity to meet with several WGs at the Japan AC meeting LH: Our OpsGL CR call obligates us to work closely with six WGs, so we seem to have already committed ourselves to the "focus and liaise" approach DH: given this, should we assign people to work with WGs? Getting WGs into compliance with OpsGL and SpecGL would be good, but higher priority should be involvement, education. OpsGL & SpecGL are tools to help get us there. First identify the WGs, contact them, build up a relationship. (The docs can be overwhelming.) If nobody is interested in doing the work this is all academic. KD: Assigned liaison can follow the WGs activities via mailing list, jump in if they see a problem. OT: We really need people to participate. KD: This is not optional - we have to do it, otherwise we'll have to drop Ops/SpecGL. LH: Is on SVG, but is falling behind DH: Will work with Multimodal working group SM: XML core PC: Leonid Arbouzov (works for PC) is on XML schema LR: Tim Bolan (NIST) and LR will do CSS KD: Will do HTML and I18N LH: Dave Marston might we willing to do Query DH: Should we ask for monthly reports from these liaisons? All agree LH: We're not necessarily volunteering for formal Ops/Spec reviews. However, we're more interested in building a relationship, teaching people good processes. LH: We will put these reviews on agenda for last telecon of each month [break...] 2 continued - Outreach LR: Asks whether "month in QA" is useful OT: Yes - it's useful, but during the past few months we haven't had much to report When we did have stuff to report, this did seem to generate responses. However, we don't know whether this would have happened anyway. LR: If we do want to continue, should we be generating materials in some other manner than reviewing our archives? OT: We could make it irregular - publish only when we have news LH: How many hits do we get? OT: Doesn't know - people aren't eagerly awaiting it LR: Thinks we should publish on a regular schedule LR: Agrees to continue to own this. If people have suggestions for additional material (other than reviewing the archives) please let her know. It can take her several hours to put one of these together. Agreed: LR will continue to do this, but it's OK to skip a month occasionally. She will also try to include material other than archives. AR: call it "QA Times", so it doesn't have to be on a rigid schedule? OT leads the discussion OT: Things are going slowly DH: Asks AR how it looks from his perspective as an outsider. AR: Doesn't see much communication OT: QA tips, everything published on our webpage, counts AR: People don't know the webpage exists DH: We have various mechanisms - mailing list archives, "google effect", we do presentations occasionally AR: You don't have outreach - you publish materials - but you're not actively trying to reach people KD: We should make announcements when stuff is published - via relevant mailing lists We could do a better job of publicising our tools. Also, we need to document them better. It would be good if we could get contacts inside "developer programs" at Sun, Apple, Microsoft and other big companies LH: What outreach projects are in progress right now? OT: the collection if "QA tips", the "WaSP ask W3C" project, and the Web quality documents of the QA library, which we are working on consolidating with contributions from IG participants. LR: We also participate in external activities (such as the voting systems panel that's coming up) - we should highlight this more LH: discussions on IG lists (eg PNG v. GIF) - do we highlight them in QA Times? LR: yes LR: people should let her know about presentations OT: if materials are public, we can put them into our library 3. Plans for next Technical Plenary (1-5 March 2004, Cannes-Mandelieu, France) When should we plan our f2f meetings? Unsure yet who is planning to attend LR: should we plan a f2f in January? DH: not sure we'll have enough to work on MS: maybe TestGL? LH: should we plan a Wednesday presentation at TP? MS: we should - this is an opportunity to pitch to WGs LR: can we get a WG to join with us to talk about what worked and what didn't? DH: we should choose the group early, and work closely with them DH: we should request a slot on Wednesday OT: should have a backup plan if we don't have enough material, or can't find a willing WG? Could we participate in an existing session? DH: a panel might be a better idea than having a single WG DH: what kind of outreach activities do we want to engage in? LR: should we try to engage with additional WGs? PC: focus on deepening relationships with groups we're already engaged with, rather than a shotgun approach of meeting with others DH: issue an open invitation - let people know that we're willing to meet with anyone who's interested LH: should we do a more technical presentation? perhaps on test-case description language, or something similar? DH: perhaps we could demo something... LH: a detailed review of checkpoints would not be very interesting to people LH: should we plan on working on TestGL during this time? We're pretty good at processing issues during telecons - may not be best use of our time to do this. Should spend time consolidating our CR experience for OpsGL and SpecGL. LH: On Thursday and Friday, QAWG members who are planning to stay should make themselves available to meet with interested WGs. LH: should meeting with interested WGs on Monday/Tuesday take precedence over our work? DH: decide this on a case-by-case basis
Received on Thursday, 30 October 2003 20:15:42 UTC