[CWG-Stewardship] Fwd: Re: [DTA - SLE] SLE Document with clarifying background info.

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Sat, May 09, 2015 at 01:15:05PM +0000, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
> Andrew,
> 
> I would agree with you if DT-A was proposing changes to the running operational system, but they are not.

Yes, they are.  The operational system includes comparisons by an
observer of conformance to service levels.  If you change the service
levels at the same time as the transition, then I can't just look at
the pre- and post-transition system and see, "Yep, they exceeded this
every month by 25% both before and after," and so on.  It's of course
possible to normalise for that, but it's a completely irrelevant
change to the transition and, in my opinion, is therefore the sort of
change that we ought not to be making now.

> We are not talking about changing running code but rather changing customer service expectations to align them with what the IANA team has been delivering for some time.

In other words, "We're changing a part of the overall system that is
not directly related to the transition because we can."

> Besides, good engineering should be focused on delivering the best possible service to meeting customer needs.
> 

_One_ of the ways one does that is by evolutionary changes rolled out
one at a time.  At least from my point of view, it doesn't seem that
Verisign would be in a hurry to make many changes at the same time,
particularly when some of the changes have deadlines imposed by
unpredictable external influences (which is why Verisign has the
tremendous history of reliability to point to).  I should expect us
all to want the same prudence be used in this case.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com