sigcomm-workflow

SIGCOMM Workflow

Use this as the project-management skill for a SIGCOMM campaign. The defining constraint is

one main-track deadline per year feeding one August conference: there is no fall gate, so the

plan is a year-long backward schedule from February, not a two-shot hedge. Replace every date

with the current official timetable.

SIGCOMM is a conference, not a journal: it has no standing editor-in-chief and no

article-processing charge. The rotating leadership is the per-edition General Chairs and

Program Committee Co-Chairs (the 2026 roster was not retrievable on 2026-07-09 — 待核实), and

the cost model is registration, not APCs; proceedings publish through ACM TAPS into the ACM

Digital Library. Chairs rotate yearly, so re-check the current organization page.

Milestones

• Venue fit and track: confirm a networking-stack mechanism and pick research vs.

experience.

• Evidence lock: freeze the testbed, traces, workloads, baselines, measurement

methodology, and the tail metrics before writing hardens.

• Abstract registration: real title, authors, topics, conflicts on HotCRP.
• Full-paper upload: anonymous PDF, 12 single-spaced pre-reference pages, ACM template.
• Review release: triage across correctness, novelty, evaluation realism, and clarity.
• Rebuttal: for papers reaching the discussion phase, a concise anonymous reply.
• Decision: accept, one-shot revision, or reject (early or formal).
• Revision (if issued): resubmit ~a month later under a shepherd against the issue list.
• Camera-ready: shepherd sign-off, TAPS final PDF plus source, de-anonymization.
• Artifact evaluation and presentation: AEC badges, public release, August talk.

Backward plan from the February paper deadline

| Weeks out (heuristic) | Systems/measurement milestone |

|---|---|

| 14+ | Mechanism designed; testbed or trace pipeline standing and repeatable |

| 10 | Core evaluation runs producing stable tails across repeated trials |

| 7 | Baselines that fight back implemented and tuned fairly |

| 5 | Full draft in ACM two-column format, figures counting against 12 pages |

| 3 | Internal mock review by a networking-minded reader; break-point experiment added |

| 2 | Reproducibility ledger and artifact skeleton assembled |

| 1 | Anonymity sweep, HotCRP fields, abstract registered |

| 0 | Full paper uploaded AoE; receipt re-read |

These offsets are planning heuristics — anchor each to the current official timetable, never

to a previous edition's calendar.

The year has two halves, not one deadline

Because the deadline is annual, the calendar after submission matters as much as before it.

As of 2026-07-09 the SIGCOMM 2026 cycle is in its live post-decision phase: the February

deadline passed, decisions issued, and the work now is camera-ready finalization, shepherd

sign-off, artifact evaluation, and the August presentation — while the next edition's

February deadline is already the horizon for new work. Plan both halves: the run-up to the

single deadline, and the shepherd-to-proceedings tail that follows acceptance.

Failure modes by stage

• Evidence still moving at week 5 forces last-minute metric changes nobody has re-run — the

classic evaluation-realism reject in the making.

• Leaving ACM two-column conversion to the final week surfaces figure-driven overflow late,

because figures count against the 12 pages.

• Skipping the mock review forfeits the only chance to hear "your baseline is a straw man"

from a friend instead of a reviewer.

• Treating a one-shot revision as optional polish rather than a shepherd-graded contract is

how a revision that dodged the issue list gets rejected.

• Deferring the artifact until after acceptance loses the reproducibility evidence that a

clean rebuild would have surfaced.

Coordination notes

• Assign one named owner for the reproducibility ledger and another for the anonymity sweep;

shared ownership is how both slip.

• Archive the exact submitted PDF and every logged run, since rebuttal and revision replies

must quote them precisely.

Output format

[Current stage] idea / evaluation / writing / abstract / submission / rebuttal / revision / accepted
[Next official deadline] <date and source, or unknown>
[Critical path] <three tasks that determine readiness>
[Risk register] <format / anonymity / evaluation realism / reproducibility / shepherd>
[Owner map] <task -> person or role>