Developing standards with and for the user (software engineering)

The success of any set of standards depends on the degree of compliance at all technical and management levels. Several problems with standards produced by classical development efforts are discussed and are attributed to the failure to consider the standards user during the generation of standards. The people who use and need standards the most (e.g. programmers using coding standards and designers using PDL standards) should be involved in the generation of those standards. Users want standards to be clear, short, relevant, and easy to reference. An alternative approach to standards development is presented, and that approach is shown to solve some problems with standards compliance.<>