@holiman’s proposed process essentially separates the “accept” decision and work for EIP implementation / tests from the “final” decision to include in an upgrade. This takes some political pressure off of the process, and is similar to bills in parliament being worked on in committee, then going to the floor for final vote.
From my observation of ADC meetings this would ease the decision-making process. This also improves the analysis of new features by providing a stage to focus more on the technical merits before later considering other issues e.g. the effect on stakeholder group.
A difficulty might be that dev teams get tied up in a lot of work on accepted/blessed EIPs, but then these EIPs are never actually deployed because it has only delayed political contention.
One way of mitigating contention is forming a separate committee, consisting of more representation from community groups (e.g. DeFi, game devs, data providers, miners, exchanges). I would name this group “product” or perhaps “roadmap”.
The findings of this committee (basically a set of position points) would of course not have any binding effect on ACD decisions, but it could be a key artifact to consider in the acceptance of an EIP or the final scheduling of release.