ConCall-20070213

T3F - Transitional Technical Task Force

Tuesday Feb 13, 2007 12:00 PM (US Eastern Time, GMT -5)

Present

Beeler, Blobel, Buitendijk, Case, Lorenzi, Parker, Quinn, Walker

Future absences

February 20, Blobel, Case

February 27, Beeler, Quinn

Prior Homework

Prepare to continue advancing two documents in parallel:

1. The draft TD structure charts which includes Craig's chart and two of Virginia's charts.
2. The list of TD responsibilities and relationships.

Accepted Agenda

1. (05 min) Roll Call & Accept agenda
2. (02 min) Status reports
3. (50 min) Technical Directorate Discussions

   (25 min) Charts of TD hierarchy and relationships

   (25 min) List of TD responsibilities

4. (05 min) Next Steps

Status Reports

Beeler reported that he discovered, belatedly, e-mails requesting T3F status reports to the Board which had not been forwarded. He will send this in.

Technical Directorate Discussion

Slide 1-TD Hierarchy diagram

There was a free ranging discussion of Organizational hierarchy begun at last weeks meeting.

We noted the strong preference of this group to seek an alternate title for the CTO --perhaps Technical Coordinating Officer. The concerns arise because of the role of CTOs in other standards bodies and because of the statement in one SI document that "CTO leads the Technical Directorate. While the CTO may seek consensus among the members of the TD, as the responsible party he or she holds the final decision making authority." An implied veto-power such as this sits very badly with the volunteer membership. We were advised to make this position known to the Transition Task Force as soon as possible.

Omissions: It was noted that the Security TC is not in the list of committees in third slide and should be.

Discussed the relationship of the various Board-appointed committees to the hierarchy. Must list all the Board-appointed committees. A number of these should report to the TD, including Electronic Services, Publishing, Architecture Review Board, Tooling, Implementation, Marketing, and Education. (Not exhaustive) While others like Legal Affairs, Finance, Bylaws, etc. will likely remain Board-appointed.

Discussed the relationship of these "appointed committees" to the TD and observed:

• Most of these are performing or overseeing "support" functions rather than "standards development" or policy functions
• These should each have a direct line relationship to the TD and a dotted line relationship to either the CTO/TCO, CEO or COO
• There should be at least one designated "staff" participant in each of these
• We need to add TD-appointed committee responsibilities to the TD list
• These groups need some form of representation in the TD
• These groups should expect to provide routine reports to the TD

TD responsibilities

After the prior meeting Beeler had re-shuffled the original list into three categories. Prior to this Meeting Berndt Blobel provided a set of recommendations by e-mail. These were discussed and we agreed to changes as follows:

• In the "Resolve Issues" (3rd) Group
  • Items 2 & 4 are the dominant responsibilities
  • Item 1 heavily overlaps item 4. Item 1 can be dropped if wording changes are made to item 4 to assure that it is covered.
  • Item 3 is an obvious requirement given the oversight responsibilities and can be dropped as an explicit line item
• In the "Development Process" 2nd) Group
  • Items 1 to 3 are the key items and in the correct order.
  • Item 4 is the same as item 3 above, and can be dropped for the same reason
• In the "Oversee Development" 1st) Group
  • Item 1 is critical and remains where it us
  • Items 2-4 should be delegated to the sub-groups with TD oversight, and enumerated as part of the sub-group's base charter
  • Items 5, 7 and 8 are project-related. These, too, need to be delegated to the individual committees via the sub-groups, with support from the PMO
  • Item 3 becomes a TD oversight of the sub-groups wirth respect to products and projects

The discussion of projects and HL7's experience with the PMO suggests that the TD and the Sub-groups must function, in part, as a "Project Mgmt Committee" assuring that the TCs are following a defined strategy. In that case, the PMO is a support position providing reporting, tools, etc. Absent such a relationship a PMO staff position cannot succeed.

MISSING: The list is still missing is a responsibility for "Product Definition" and strategy.

Next Steps

Agreed for next week to discuss:

• Makeup of TD (slide 2)
• Makeup of Sub-groups (slide 3)
• Utility of a distinction between TCs and SIGs
• Refinement of the responsibilities list & hierarchy chart