Standards Best Practices Blog

I’ve written before about the qualifications and responsibilities of various kinds of participants in standards activities, including the committee members, chairs, and the organization’s standards administrator. There’s another player that I’d like to describe: the person at a member company who manages or coordinates the standards work and participation of the company’s various employees.

This person usually has the title of VP or Director of Standards and is responsible for ensuring that the company’s interests are being represented in standards activities. Companies participate in standards activities because doing so brings them some benefit. They get to help drive the direction of standards and hence their industry, have their technology turned into standards, and learn what others in the industry are doing. It helps them gain or retain a position on the leading or even bleeding edge of technology. All of this can be used to positively affect the company’s bottom line.

In small companies with just a few employees participating in standards coordinating their efforts is not difficult. But large enterprises with tens of thousands of employees overall may have hundreds of those employees participating in hundreds of committees at dozens of standards organizations. It’s a huge effort to manage and coordinate the efforts of these employees.

Why bother? Why not just give employees the freedom participate where they see fit, whether or not they can justify their efforts to their immediate manager? Consider the costs to the company of participating with regards to the employee’s time (salary), direct participation costs such as membership dues and travel to meetings, and the opportunity cost of the employee working on something other than e.g. product development, all multiplied by dozens or perhaps hundreds of employees. Consider the waste of costs associated with participating in the wrong committees at the wrong organizations. Further, consider the potential for employees disclosing proprietary information such as technology in development before the company is ready to release this information. Ultimately, though, why would you ever let employees do what they want, when they want, without managing them to ensure that they are making a positive contribution to the company?

The company needs to have a standards strategy with regards to what it is trying to accomplish by participating in standards activities, which activities to participate in, which and how many people to send to each activity and how much time to assign them to devote to these activities. The company may wish to not only participate at the technical level in committees but also to seek leadership opportunities within an organization in order to help set the strategy and direction for the organization.

This company standards strategy should not be set in an ad hoc manner by the individual employees. It may not even be set by the VP of Standards, but should be created by a team including upper management, product development, marketing, public relations, legal, government affairs, etc. It is the VP of Standards’ responsibility to ensure that this strategy is being followed, that the company’s activities are in line with this strategy.

This mission is complicated by the fact that the participating employees generally do not report directly to the VP of Standards. Rather, they are employees of various departments and divisions, and their salaries and other participation costs come out of various budgets. Perhaps the VP of Standards controls a budget for paying the membership dues of the standards organizations that the company has joined, in which case the VP can act as a gateway to control which organizations the company will participate in, but any control over the extent of participation will have to be coordinated with the managers of the employees. The departments and/or divisions of the company may have their own goals for participation, which may overlap or conflict with the overall company goals, and these must all be coordinated as well.

Monitoring the extent and quality of activities is a difficult task for the VP of Standards given the numbers involved, not just of employees but also of committees and organizations. How do you ensure that not only the right people are in the right committees, but that they are voting the way the company desires, that they are contributing only technology that the company is ready to contribute, they are not disclosing confidential or proprietary information – or even that they are actively participating and not using this as an opportunity simply to get out of the office?

The VP of Standards may wish to maintain a database of all company standards participants, and require periodic reports from the participants. Training of participants so that they are knowledgeable about the company’s standards strategy and legal/IPR policies is extremely useful. Access to document, email, and balloting archives at the standards organization may be requested in order to monitor company activities. But most important may be getting the various department and division managers to understand the importance of the company’s standards strategy and the necessity of following it and allowing the VP of Standards to have some level of control over their employees.

I’ve always had a thing for obscure collective nouns and units of measure. I suppose that you could call these standards – at least those terms that are somehow agreed upon and institutionalized. More likely they have simply grown out of long-time practice.

A collective noun is a term used to describe a group or multiple of anything, e.g. the “flock” in “flock of pigeons” or the “herd” in “herd of tourists.” Others include school of fish, litter of puppies, murder of ravens, nest of rabbits, parliament of owls, etc. I sometimes tease my kids by faking early-onset dementia and mixing these up, e.g. a herd of ducks. A great book on the subject (collectives, not dementia) is An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, who is now better known for interviewing celebrities on Inside the Actor’s Studio on the Bravo channel.

As for units of measure, we’re all familiar with the crazy English system of inches, feet, yard, miles; of teaspoon, ounce, pint, quart, gallon; and ounces (again), pounds, ton, etc. and of the more well thought out metric system where everything is related to each other by tens or tenths.

A short article in this month’s Wired magazine (Sept 2007, p. 58) discusses the effort to create a physical object that can be used as a reference definition of the kilogram. A sidebar lists some of the more commonly used units of measure including the meter, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela. A second sidebar lists a few of the more obscure units of measure including the gou, nibble, twip, thrave, jansky, butt, and of course the infamous smoot, which is the length (or height) of Oliver Smoot, recently the chair of ANSI and president of ISO and who knows a thing or two about standards. (By the way, the Harvard Bridge between Cambridge and Boston is exactly 364.4 smoots and one ear long.)

A post at the Register web site is the immediate winner of my instantaneously created and judged “Best New Standard of 2007” contest. We’ve heard of the famous furloughs per fortnight, but what about the velocity of a sheep in a vacuum? Just as with the metric system, most of the new units are interrelated; this one uses the EU standard Florentine linguini (unboiled at sea level) as the base measure, moving up through double-decker busses and then on brontosauruses and the length of the universe.

However, I am still unable to find an acceptable definition for my all-time favourite unit of measure: just what is a grundle, anyway?

To follow up from the previous post about where to participate, let’s ask the question of where a company should choose to submit completed technical work for approval. Let’s say that your company, or perhaps you as an individual, has developed a specification, and would like to get it approved as a standard. Where do you take it?

As with the previous question, the answer depends a lot on what you intend to get out of the submission. At what level do you want your specification approved: at an industry, national, or international level? Do you expect the submission to sail through the approval process unchanged and as-is, or would you allow (or perhaps want or expect) that the organization to which you submit the specification will further develop it? And, what do you hope to gain by having the work approved: just the warm and fuzzy feeling of accomplishment, or perhaps the more valuable increase in adoption?

There are various criteria, and a number of questions you should ask yourself, when looking for a standards organization to submit your work to. First, of course, is whether the organization accepts work developed outside of the organization. And do they only accept submissions from members of the organization?

What are the IPR requirements for the submission? What declarations does the organization require with regards to associated patents and trademarks? What licensing terms does the organization require for patents associated with the specification? Who will own the copyright on the specification once the organization runs it through their process, the contributor or the organization?

What will the organization do with the submitted specification? Will they approve it as-is? Or does the organization’s process require that it undergo further development and review before approval? If the organization does additional work on the specification, what form will this take? Are the members of the organization technically qualified to do further development of the specification? Is the organization’s process conducive to positive improvement of the specification through technical work inside the committee combined with public review? What influence or control does the original submitter have on the direction of the work once the specification has been submitted?

(This is the dreaded “rubber stamping” question. There are organizations who have a reputation for approving submitted specifications with zero or minimal review and additional work, and some companies specifically seek out those organizations to approve their specifications which have been developed in-house without input from other interested parties. Operating in this manner is, in my opinion, a subversion of the standards process, which ideally should be based on the accepted principles of openness, balance, transparency, due process, etc. Accepting a “closed” specification into the standards process without further “open” development should not be considered as resulting in an “open” standard. Relinquishing control of the content of the submitted work is, or should be, the cost of pursuing approval of the work as a standard. If you don’t want to give up control and ownership, then call the specification a company-developed specification, but don’t call it an open standard.)

Next, what is approval by the standards organization worth? Does the organization have a good enough reputation in its industry that approval by the organization is recognized as something of value? Is the organization accredited or recognized by, or have official liaison with, national or international bodies so that specifications approved by the organization can be submitted for national or international approval?

What will the organization do with the specification once it is approved? Will it make it available to potential implementers, either for free or for sale? How easy will it be for interested parties to obtain a copy? (Assuming that your goal is for the specification to be implemented, you will want it to be as easy as possible for someone to get a copy of it.) What activities will the organization pursue to promote adoption? Will the organization organize educational events, conduct interoperability demonstrations, offer certification testing, etc.?

And finally, how will the organization maintain the standard over time? Will it guarantee a permanent archive of the standard? Will it assign the standard to a group or committee that is responsible for collecting and addressing comments from the public, and for revising and updating the standard over time?

As with the previous question of where to participate, there are no right answers to any of the above questions. Much depends on the goals that the initial developer has for the future of the specification. With the large number of standards organizations in existence there is a wide variety of operating policies and practices. The developer should research questions such as those above and come to his own conclusion whether the organization is the right one to submit work to.

Let’s say that your company, or perhaps you as an individual, has a burning desire to get involved in standards work. (You wouldn’t be reading this blog if you weren’t interested in the topic.) Given the large number of standards organizations that you could potentially get involved with, which one(s) should you join? You can’t join them all; first of all the financial costs would be enormous, but in particular you only get the benefits of joining when you also dedicate some of your time and effort in participating, and the amount of your available time is finite.

Before going any further, the most important question to ask yourself is why you want to participate. As a wise VP of Standards told me many years ago, you don’t “do” standards; you participate in standards activities because there are specific benefits that you hope to gain in exchange for the financial and time costs of participating. You use participation in standards organizations to achieve a goal of or provide benefits to the company. Standards work is a tool, a means to an end.

So the first criteria in selecting a standards organization is deciding which organization(s) will help the company achieve a specific goal or gain the most benefit. Is the organization doing work that, once completed and adopted, will benefit the company? Is the organization’s topic or technology, and the work being done, applicable to the company’s products, and would it affect the company’s revenue stream? Will this technology be important to the market or industry? Does the company hope to steer or otherwise affect the direction of the technology in its favor, or does it simply want to keep up with what is being done in hopes of being an early implementer, or keeping track of its competitors?

Does the standards organization follow the generally accepted principals of transparency, openness, impartiality, effectiveness, relevance, consensus, due process, timely, and balance? Is the organization recognized or accredited by national or international standards bodies?

Is the organization open to new members? Does it encourage participation of new members? Is it easy to join? Are the dues a reasonable amount? What benefits does the organization provide to its members with regards to publicity and exposure? What level of infrastructure and staffing support does it provide?

Does the organization have a complete and fair Intellectual Property Rights policy? Does it have a well-structured committee process? What other organizational policies and procedures are in place?

How is the organization governed? Do members set the technical and strategic direction and agenda of the organization’s activities? How are board Directors selected? Are governing positions bought or elected?

Is the organization going to take advantage of the technical expertise of the employees that the member company sends to participate, or is the set of technical experts a closed group with everyone else relegated to being reviewers?

What activities does the organization pursue in order to promote the adoption of the completed work? Does the organization sponsor educational forums and seminars? Is conformance and certification part of the organization’s agenda? What about promotional and marketing activities?

There are no right answers to any of the above questions. With the large number of standards organizations in existence there is a wide variety of operating policies and practices. The prospective member should research questions such as those above and come to its own conclusion whether the organization is the right one in which to participate and to invest its time and resources in.

Next up: How to choose the right organization to contribute existing work to.

We hear quite often of new standards organizations or consortia, etc. starting up, with promises of great things to come. Many of these new efforts become successful and deliver on their mission of creating and delivering technical solutions that benefit their particular industry. But of course there are also a few fail to reach their potential and fail to deliver, or never quite get off the ground.

At some point it is time to move on. Perhaps the organization is not successful in its mission or, at the other extreme, has been so successful that it has solved the problem it set out to fix. Or perhaps, as happens more often, the market has moved on or the technical landscape has changed to make the original scope and mission of the organization no longer valuable or beneficial. At this point the organization needs to make a decision whether to close its doors, or to adapt to the new situation by changing the mission or focus of the organization, or by merging with another complimentary or competitive organization.

A high profile example of the merger of two similar organizations is the Linux Foundation, formed early this year by a merger of Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group. The purpose of LF is to promote the adoption of Linux by providing support and resources for the kernel developers, standardizing implementations of Linux, and providing legal protection for its developers and implementers. Prior to the merger, the two original organizations had similar, overlapping, missions, and merging the efforts was the best way to coordinate all efforts and to maximize the effect of finite resources.

When the market moves on, negating the need for the organization, the organization can change course in order to remain relevant. The best example I can think of for changing the organization’s mission, because as a member of the Board I was right in the thick of it, is OASIS. In 1993 a group of SGML tool vendors formed SGML Open for the purpose of promoting the adoption of that technology. It had mostly a promotional and educational focus, with a small amount of technical standards work being done as well, all with the intent of increasing the size of the SGML market. But five years later the world was moving towards XML. SGML Open could have declared victory and closed shop, but its members, most of whom were already jumping on the XML bandwagon, decided instead to adapt to the new technology. This meant more than just changing the name of the organization; it also had to change the nature of its activities: with the press giving lots of attention to XML there was little need to promote the technology. What was needed, instead, were standards for implementing XML. The members also wanted to look further down the road, not knowing if XML would be replaced by yet another technology in a few years, so rather than restricting the organization to XML the members decided to focus on all structured information standards. So SGML Open became OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. With a process that allowed the members to create technical committees and thus set the technical strategy of the organization, OASIS became focused on e-business and web services standards, and has had as many as 75 technical committees.

Some organizations decide to shut down when they can truthfully say that they have accomplished their mission and see no reason to carry on. Changing the scope or mission or merging with another organization may not be interesting options. Generally an organization would decide to shut down for business reasons: there simply isn’t enough money to continue. The reason for this is usually lack of interest by members; the members quit participating and renewing their memberships, and it’s impossible to recruit new ones because the organization is unable to provide a benefit for being a member. This could be because of a poor technical agenda, because the work being done is no longer of interest to anyone, or even because the members don’t have faith in the management of the organization.

A recent example of closing its doors is the SMS Forum which announced that it would disband at the end of last month, and take down its web page at the end of the year (so download a copy of the specs before it’s too late!). I haven’t been able to find anyone at SMS Forum to ask about the reasons for the closure, but perhaps this is a case of the organization being able to declare victory after having solved the problem and completed their mission – they have, after all, a reasonable number of specs to download.

Over the past year as part of my job at Kavi, providing consulting on best practices for standards organizations, I’ve been called in to help launch new organizations. Not all of these efforts get off the ground. The organizers may have a good idea, and perhaps some technology that might benefit a particular industry if only they can get a few more companies signed up. Sometimes the organization can launch, grow, and be successful, but other times the effort never gets much further than the idea stage.

What does it take to turn an idea into an organization? What things are needed to define the organization and get it off the ground?

Organizations will generally start with some sort of bootstrap period. This is the time when the originator(s) of the idea recruit  support from additional parties to, first, ascertain that there is sufficient interest in the idea to start an organization, and second, to define the organization and its structure to a level sufficient to begin recruiting enough members to achieve some sort of critical mass. Only then can the organization be formally launched. The following needs to be defined, roughly in this order, during this bootstrap period:

• The idea or technology, perhaps contributed by one of the founders, that will form the basis of the new organization. This must, of course, be something that will provide benefit to the industry and in particular to the members of the organization if there are to be any members. It helps for the idea to be timely, unique, and perhaps revolutionary.
• Formalization of the idea, usually through the definition of a mission statement, scope, and list of deliverables for the organization.
• A sponsor or host, a company or companies willing and able to front resources until the new organization becomes self-sustaining.
• A proposed deliverable that provides value to a particular audience or industry, and provides incentive to potential benefactors to join and participate
• A business plan that provides for sufficient income to become self sufficient within a time period agreed to by the initial sponsor.
• A staffing plan that provides sufficient human resources to accomplish key organizational and recruiting tasks. Initial staffing could be employee(s) provided by the initial sponsor or founders and assigned to the new organization, or new people could be hired.
• Bylaws that define an organizational and governance structure conducive to the success of the organization, and provide sufficient rights to all members to encourage their joining and participating. (Not all governance rights should go to the founders and/or highest level of membership; a mistake that I’ve seen too many times is the desire of the founders, particularly the creator of the initial technology, to have dictatorial power in the organization. Why would other companies want to join an organization set up in that manner?)
• An IPR policy that allows and encourages contribution by the members, protects the organization’s work by requiring disclosure of member’s patents at an appropriate time, and rewards contributions and patent disclosures with the right to fair licensing terms.
• An open, consensus-based committee process that is fair and balanced, and permits and encourages participation by interested parties.
• A membership agreement that binds members to the policies and procedures of the organization, in particular the bylaws and IPR policy.
• A membership and dues structure that encourages participation by a variety of audiences (vendors, implementers, service providers, etc.).
• A technical infrastructure that supports the activities of the organization and makes best use of volunteers’ time. Initially it should provide a web presence and email capabilities for staff and committees. Additional functionality should be added as the organization grows such as document management, rosters, and balloting, etc.

While it is possible to launch the organization before all of the above is fully defined, it may be difficult to recruit members without their knowing what rights and responsibilities that they have. There may be a considerable amount of further development of the above items during the first year or two of the organization, but a sufficient framework needs to exist at the start.

Once the organization has been launched, additional members can be recruited and committee work can begin. Over the longer term, the organization will need to pay attention to further development and maintenance of the above policies and structure; membership balance, recruiting, and retention; continued financial viability; an ongoing technical strategy; and activities to promote the adoption of the completed work. But of course none of that will be necessary if the organization doesn’t ever get past the idea stage.