It seems that we’ve been launching new Technical Committees at an amazing pace and that’s a good thing. The OASIS TC Process has some very strict rules around the timing of a new Technical Committee launch to ensure that the requisite steps are completed as quickly as possible. All those rules can lead to quite a bit of confusion, particularly when trying to plan backwards – say, from the date of the first meeting, or the Call for Participation announcement. My notebook is full of such scenarios – each time a new date is suggested the planning starts again.

In an effort to make your life easier, as well as mine, I’ve built (with the help of Rob Weir at IBM) a spreadsheet that does all the calculations automagically. Enter a date in a yellow cell and each of the other milestones will display not only a date, but the day of the week (scheduling a conference call on a Saturday afternoon could result in poor attendance). There are three separate tables on the first worksheet tab:

1. Submission Date Scheduler – enter the date of the planned/actual draft charter submission the OASIS TC Administrator to see the dates for each following step
2. Meeting Date Scheduler – enter the planned date for the first meeting (either teleconference or face-to-face) and the charter submission date as well as all interim dates are created
3. Call for Participation Scheduler – enter the planned date for the Call for Participation announcement and all prior and following dates are displayed

I’ve created a video tutorial to go along with the spreadsheet; the spreadsheet itself is available in both .ods and .xls formats.

There’s another tab in the workbook that will show the minimum timeline from Public Review through OASIS Standard ballot results announcement. More on that in the next post.