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name: sigcomm-workflow description: Use when planning an ACM SIGCOMM project timeline around the single yearly deadline — venue fit, evidence lock, abstract registration and paper upload in February, the early-reject/rebuttal/one-shot-revision review pipeline, shepherd-run camera-ready, TAPS proceedings, artifact evaluation, and forward planning for the next edition.

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>