OMG Technology Adoption Process
Part III: Voting to Adopt an OMG specification
|
|
|
|
|
|
Four votes? Why so many?
The OMG process has many constituents, and is careful to build
consensus among all of them. That's why committees charter
subordinate committees to serve as advisory bodies: The Board of
Directors chartered the two Technology Committees (Platform and
Domain) to vote on technology adoptions and pass them on to it,
and the Technology Committees charter Task Forces to do the
requisite technical work.
And so, to build this consensus, a submission must pass recommendation
or adoption votes in four bodies: the initiating TF, the AB, the
TF's parent TC, and OMG's BOD. All except the TC vote require only
a simple majority. The TC vote requires 2/3 majority.
Technical work gets done in the TF, whose meetings attract
primarily member delegates interested in the technical details of
RFPs and submissions. The AB review is technical, but focuses at
the architectural level. The AB doesn't make changes itself - issues get referred
back to the submitters for resolution. At the TC level, some voters are
technical, but most represent a business/management point of view. They
represent all aspects of OMG technology, unlike a TF which
focuses on only one segment. Finally, BOD members are typically
drawn from very senior management levels, and concern themselves
with mainly business aspects (as does the Board's business subcommittee,
of course).
Top
|
|
|
Who votes in the Task Force?
OMG offers membership at eight levels, with five levels of
privileges. (Domain and Platform levels have identical privilege
levels albeit in different sides of the organization. Influencing,
Government, and University levels have identical privileges.) Voting is by company, one vote per company.
As we pointed out when we discussed closed voting lists, every
membership category that is allowed to vote anywhere, is allowed
to vote in every TF (subject to voting list closure constraints,
of course).
TF meetings and votes typically take place at OMG Technical
Meeting weeks, although TFs are allowed to meet separately from
the rest of the OMG when they wish. However, votes to
recommend technology for adoption must take place at an OMG
technical meeting week. In the early days of OMG, when members
felt compelled to put a lot of base technology in place as
quickly as possible, TFs held additional meetings between TC
meetings to speed evaluations. More recently, Domain TFs have met
at conferences held by industry groups, typically when most of
their members were planning to attend the conference anyhow. OMG
TFs use these meetings to recruit new members, too.
Votes to issue RFPs are always open to all voters: Since there
is no RFP and are no deadlines until the RFP is issued, there can
be no closed voting list for such a vote. Because the TF vote does
not actually issue the RFP (TCs issue RFPs), the motion in the TF meeting will
sound something like this: "I move that we recommend this
RFP, document number orbos/99-11-14, to the Platform Technology
Committee for issuance." You might think that a Yes vote by
the TF would send the RFP directly to the TC but it doesn't; it goes to the AB
first as we describe in the next topic.
Votes on technology adoptions are also recommendations, but
only voters registered on the voting list may participate. The motion
to recommend would sound something
like this: "I move that we recommend the Whatever Facility
submission, document number ad/00-02-02, with errata document
number ad/00-06-50, to the Platform TC for adoption." Once
again, this vote does not send the submission directly to the TC;
it has to pass muster in the AB first.
Top
|
|
|
What is the role of the Architecture Board?
The AB and the BOD are special: their members are elected, and
only elected members can vote at their meetings. (You also have to
be elected to an FTF or RTF in order to vote, but the number
of seats on these Task Forces is not restricted so their elections
are typically formalities.) The AB consists of ten
members, five elected by members of the PTC, another five by the
DTC, and its chair, OMG's Director of Architecture, who also has a
vote. OMG members get to know their peers' capabilities over the
years, and typically elect only the best technicians and
architects to the board.
Per OMG's P&P, every RFP must be approved by the AB before it
can be issued, and every submission must be approved by the AB
before it can be recommended by a TC to the BOD. AB members
examine both RFPs and submissions for consistency with existing
OMG technology, as well as other factors. Each TF is assigned one
or two AB "buddies" - AB members who take primary
responsibility for that TF's work. AB Buddies examine documents well
in advance of meetings, suggesting changes before TF while TF
members are still evaluating them, when
documents are easy to modify. Because of this advance work, most
documents pass the AB with little fuss.
A note on discussion and voting: If you visited an OMG
meeting week and watched many motions pass with unanimous or
near-unanimous approval, with little discussion at meeting time,
you might get the impression that these votes were "rubber
stamps". This is not the case! OMG members realize that
their companies' livelihood depends on the technology that the
organization adopts, and take their responsibility towards this
very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they do their
homework weeks in advance of each meeting, discussing
contentious issues over email or teleconference; issues
unresolved by meeting week are discussed in the hallways and the
bar. It's no coincidence that so much discussion and negotiation
takes place in smaller groups where compromise is easier to
achieve. Working this way, most issues are resolved before
members get together for the vote itself. It takes a lot of
advance work to ensure that decisions can be made smoothly, and
it's a tribute to the seriousness of the participants in the OMG
process that this happens so much of the time.
AB members take their responsibilities seriously, and spend an
estimated 25% of their work time on AB duties. OMG appreciates the
sacrifice that member companies make when they support a staff
member who sits on the AB. During an OMG technical meeting week,
the AB meets on Monday and Thursday afternoons from 1:00 PM until
work is complete, nominally at 5:00 PM but frequently later.
Top
|
|
|
Who votes in the Technology Committee?
Contributing members vote in both the PTC and DTC. Platform
members vote only in the PTC; Domain only in the DTC. Unlike
voting in TFs (and SIGs and Subcommittees), only designated company
delegates or their designated proxies may vote in TCs.
Votes to issue RFPs take place at TC meetings held on Friday
morning at the end of every OMG Technical Meeting week. (In fact,
the week's activities all lead up to the "Friday plenaries"
where all of the TF and SIG recommendations are acted upon by the
TCs.) If the TC meeting is quorate (and, so far, every OMG TC
meeting has been), a simple majority vote issues the RFP.
Virtually always, the vote is unanimous.
TC votes to recommend technology to the BOD for adoption are
more complex, because quorum for these votes is 2/3 of the entire
membership and not some fraction of those present. These votes may
start at a technical meeting, but continue by email and take six
to eight weeks to complete. Quorum decreases as the voting period
progresses, so that members that don't care about a
particular technology won't prevent its adoption by not voting.
You can view the status of current technology email votes
here.
The label "FAXvotes" at the top of the page is an
historical anomaly; voting is by email these days.
Top
|
|
|
The Board of Directors and its Business Committee too?
Yes; the BOD and its Business Subcommittee (BSC) represent the business side of the
process and, because of the way the OMG bylaws are written, the
BOD is the body whose vote turns a submission into an official OMG
specification.
The BSC sends a questionnaire to every submitter while the TC
adoption vote is underway. The questionnaire asks the company to
confirm and give details on the commercialization commitment they
made at the beginning of the RFP process in their LOI. Because
companies' plans, staffing, and budget can change during the year
or so that an RFP takes to run its course, from time to time a
company will not confirm that it still plans to commercialize the
technology even though it fully intended to back when the RFP
started.
The BOD does not vote on an adoption recommendation until it
receives a report from the BSC that at least one company plans to
commercialize the technology. If none of the submitting companies
turn in an acceptable BSC questionnaire, the adoption vote is
postponed, perhaps indefinitely. But, if one or more companies has
submitted a satisfactory questionnaire, the BOD votes on the
technology and (in every case so far, at least) adopts it.
Following a favorable BOD vote, the submission becomes an OMG Adopted
Specification, and gets posted on the Recently Adopted
Specifications web page.
Top
|
|
|
Last updated on
02/14/2013
|
|
