I’m nearing the end of my series, “The 10 Commandments for Effective Standards”. Here is the 9th installment. It looks at how the standardization process can be accelerated and how standards can have a better chance of being adopted by industry.

The 9th Commandment for Effective Standards is: Start With Donations, Not From Scratch.

In the fast-paced EDA industry, spending too many years producing a standard can cause the standard to be pretty much obsolete by the time it’s finished. A sure way to speed up the standards process is to start with donations of already-proven formats, technology, and methods. Creating a foundation for a standard with techniques that have been shown to be useful gives a working committee a big head start. It also means that bugs or limitations may have already been addressed, lightening the load for the committee.

It’s important for the working committee – and its parent organization –  to allow donations to come from more than one source. Limiting contributions to a single company can be met with skepticism. It can also make committee members suspicious that a single company’s agenda is being pushed or that the standardization process isn’t open.

Of course, if a single solution is so elegant and welcomed by the committee that it’s not interested in other donations, it’s fine to proceed. However, this sense should be widely accepted, and committee members shouldn’t be blocked from making donations if they wish to.

On the other hand, if only one donation is made and no other donations are forthcoming, it could indicate that there’s no real need for a standard. In this case, even if much time and effort are put into producing the standard, it could end up sitting on a shelf, unadopted.

Donations can be made in a variety of ways, and established standards-setting and standards-development organizations have policies governing them. At times, owners can contribute their solutions through licensing schemes, but it’s critical that the terms be reasonable and non-discriminatory. Also known as RAND terms, this insures that all interested parties will have access to the standard for use in their products and services.

I know that some industries have to create standards from scratch before products can be developed. Yet, in my industry I’ve found that donations of proven technology result in highly effective standards.