Review & Approval

Overview

Review & Approval

In Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), the approval or rejection of a contribution follows a democratic process; the Unanimous Agreement.

The SDOs use the Review & Approval process to reach a consensus inside a Working Group. During this process, the Working Group reviews a particular Contribution for a pre-designated period, e.g., X day(s). At the end of that period, the Chair can merge the Contribution if, e.g.:

The Contribution has received three OK's, and
no Objections.

If the Contribution receives a Comment, it is up to the Chair | Editor to decide how to incorporate it into the Technical Specifications. However, if the Contribution receives an Objection, the Chair | Editor cannot merge the Contribution, and the Working Group must review it before deciding its final disposition (accepted or rejected).

This Review & Approval process suggested here differs from the process followed by an Open Source organization. Open Source organizations usually follow a meritocratic process where the Chair decides what to accept or reject. If a person doesn't like that the group rejects her Contribution, she can fork the Projec and continue its development outside the group. However, the main goal of an SDO is to reach interoperability. Therefore forking is not the solution to a technical dispute.

Suppose a contribution receives an Objection, which is not withdrawn Sustained Objection. In this case, the Chair may ask the Contributor and the Objector to provide a resolution to the Objection. If, after a round of technical discussions, no agreement is reached and the Objector sustains the Objection, then the Chair may call for a vote.

Voting in a Standards Organization to resolve technical issues Objections is highly discouraged . Voting on technical matters produces tension in the Working Groups. Therefore, voting should be a rare event.

Review Period

Period of time during which the contribution will be under review before being merged.
- The period MAY be: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 14 days
- 0 days imply that the contribution is merged without Working Group review

Comments vs Objections

During the Review & Approval process members MAY raise comments or objections:
- Comments MUST be taken in consideration by the Working Group, but they MAY be dismissed if they group thinks that are not relevant.
- Objections MUST be taken in consideration and they cannot be dismissed by the Working Group without being reviewed.
If a contribution receives an objection the group MUST resolve the issue, with the person that raise the objection, before deciding the status of the contribution. If the objection is sustained, meaning the person doesn’t remove it, then the group will have to recur to a Voting on Technical Issues to resolve it.

Approval Criteria

A contribution is considered Approved and therefore it can be merged if:
- The contribution has not received any sustainable objection during the review period, AND
- At least 3 reviewers have indicated that they agree with the contribution
If a sustained objection is received, the contribution cannot be merged, even if 3 or more contributors agreed with the contribution.
If during the review period a contribution receives a comment, it is up to the group or Editor | Chair to accept the comment or not. In any case, in order to merge the contribution at least 3 reviewers MUST indicate that they agree with the contribution.
In a real-time meetings, the lack of disagrement or silence when the Chair asks for agreemement to approve a contribution is considered an Agrement.