It’s time for the next installment in “The 10 Commandments for Effective Standards”. The 7th Commandment for Effective Standards is:

Think Relevance.

In order for a standard to be effective, it has to fill an industry need. Formal standards are expensive and time-consuming to produce, so it’s important that they give real value back to customers and suppliers. Pet projects are not appropriate for standardization because they don’t serve the market at large. It may be fun or intellectually stimulating to standardize an arcane piece of technology, but it doesn’t help the community to use resources on efforts that aren’t really needed. I experienced this firsthand in my first couple of years as a standards participant. To protect the certainly innocent, I won’t mention names, but there was a small simulator company that desperately tried to create an IEEE standard based on their own unique algorithm. No one else thought their stuff was cool, so the effort was ultimately fruitless and resources were wasted.

There’s also a timeliness factor to consider for relevant standards. Standardizing an unproven or not-adopted technology is not effective. We could have standardized aspects of bubble memory technology, but I doubt it would have been worthwhile because the technology didn’t catch on. Cycle-based simulation for electronic design automation is another good example. A decade ago, I sat through an attempt to create a standard around it, but it also failed because the technology was just too new at the time.

So, the next time you, your company, your standards organization, or your industry considers developing a standard, be sure to ask first, “Will it be relevant?”

Warning: if a standard is produced that isn’t relevant, it could become a laugh. (If you haven’t seen this week’s Dilbert series, it’s about the standards game. And I think it’s really funny. All hail, Scott Adams!)