This is the continuation of a discussion that originated on the ISA88 and ISA95 lists. The issue at hand is how to improve the ISA standards development process, in particular increasing the speed of standards development. Truly, today the word speed should not be applied to standards development.

From my roles in ISA standards, committee member, co-chair, managing director, I can say that this is a known problem and some possible solutions have been identified. It is important to point out that ISA develops standards following the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) guidelines. Sometimes when people suggest an alternate way to do standards, the answer is that is not the process because that would not follow the guidelines. That may not be a very sympathetic answer. So if that is how you feel, I suggest you lean to accept what you cannot change.

In general I suggest we protect the identities of the committees and individuals. This is not the forum for calling individuals to task.

In my opinion, formed in only 8 years of ISA standards experience with 7 committees, there are 3 critical factors for success in standards; leadership, participation, and tools/processes.

Leadership

A standard committee, again from my admittedly limited experience, has natural motive force in almost all directions at once, being a committee. If you have N members of the committee present, the natural energy is focused in at least N+1 directions, with at least one person changing their mind. The leaders of the committee, usually the chairs, but not always, provide the path to channel this energy. In my experience as co-chair of ISA-X, when the co-chairs took a break for a few months, very little progress was made. ISA-Y struggle for years to make much progress, in my opinion, because of lack of leadership. When a new chair was appointed, things started to move.

But leading a committee is not easy, and the bigger the committee, the harder it gets. After co-chair Donald Dunn and I learned the ropes, I spent 20 hours a week on ISA-X, on average, for 3 years. That is not company paid time, that’s nights and weekends. (Let’s say standards are my hobby.) And my co-chair was spending quite a bit of time too. We talked almost every day. For 2 of every 3 months we led weekly conference calls. Well, you get the point, it takes a lot of work to clear the path to let the members of the committee create the standard.

Not everyone is willing or able to dedicate the time it takes to lead a committee. It’s a volunteer position. There is an upside when you get things done. Along the way there is a down side. Some of the people you wish you had never met will show up at your committee meetings. They will think it is perfectly acceptable to develop a list of your faults and share that with you on the committee distribution list, along with guidance on how you should live your life from that day forward. They will provide advice on how the standards process should be run instead of following the ANSI guidelines. You will need to have thick skin and patience to succeed as a committee chair. I developed patience along the way, but I still lost it a few times.

Where we have some opportunity for improvement is in selecting, training, and supporting committee leaders.

Selecting the leaders for committees can be tricky. I don’t know how to improve that, but there is an opportunity to improve the deselection process. Until recently we could not remove a committee chair. That has changed and now the managing director can remove a chair if they are not able to get the committee moving.

But that should come only after the coaching and support. That is the job of the managing director. Often they do not do that job. I know that I don’t do that job for a couple of committees, ISA-A and ISA-B. They have been in place for years, so I assume they don’t need me stepping in. Maybe that is not right. I do know that new chairs need help to understand the standards process and get things going. When we started on ISA-X, we got a copy of the ISA guidelines. Nothing more. We did get some advice from some members of ISA-C, some of which was good. It took 2.5 years to learn what we needed to learn. So if we improve that part, we can indeed cut years off the standards development process. We have developed some training for chairs and directors to help with this. Also, getting a better match between directors and committees would help. Sometimes director appointments are more political than practical.

To support the committee leaders we should put in place a means to expel committee members that cannot be trusted to be professional. So much drama and wasted effort goes into dealing with smart people that do not play well with others. It may possibly have some very small impact on the results, but I doubt it. The whiners and naysayers are part to the problem, though they always think they are part of the solution. Expulsion does have to be balanced with allowing technical disagreement. It is tough to make the distinction because a hallmark of these types of people is the personal attacks they make that turn technical issues into personal issues. But expelling the unprofessional would cut years off of the standards process and eliminate much of the unpleasantness.

Participation

Leaders still need the committee. The real work of standards is getting the words on paper and then editing them a dozen times. The speed of standards is a balance. You need the participation to move the process along, and you need time for the consensus to develop. The starting point is tricky. It needs to be open, but it needs to get done. A bad start, like a draft prepared in advance by one person, can be worse than a slow start. But if no one steps up to do the writing there will be no progress. In the end, there emerges a core group that does most of the work. If that group does not emerge, there will be no standard.

There are not that many companies that are willing to fund participation on standards, especially users. On ISA-X, that was the most common issue with physical meetings, lack of funding. I paid my own way on several occasions. On ISA-D, the manufacturers are doing most of the writing (and fighting) at more frequent meetings, and very few users can keep up. The physical meetings allow the consensus to develop at the dinners and lunches in a way that does not happen with virtual meetings.

Virtual meetings have greatly reduced the cost and time for standards development. With the right work processes in place, you can address many things in conference calls and save the big items for the meetings. The virtual meetings allow more people to participate. But the real participation needed is the writing and the commenting, and not just calling in. If we made better use of virtual meetings we could improve the speed of standards.

Tool and Processes

Today there is no standard in a box kit for committees. Start from scratch and use the IEC format. There are style guides and comment forms. In ISA-X, it took us awhile to find a good work process and develop tool that supported that process. We had a 3 month cycle; one month for comments, two months for resolution. Rinse, repeat. The comment spreadsheet was out tool for assigning work, tracking status, and developing schedules. It supported the work process of the core group that emerged, that group of active participants. It help the chairs run the process. If we had that at the start, and some coaching on how to make the path, we would have cut years off the process.

An opportunity is to find the tools developed by different committees and have generic versions ready to support committees. The same for the work processes. From my limited experience each committee has their own tools and processes. Some may not want to change, but at least they should have the choice.

So there are definitely opportunities. I’m sure there are some great ideas out there. What suggestions do you have?

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