JISC

The process of the creation and development of a standard is one way of understanding why different standards development organisations (SDOs) are seen as having different status.

For example, proprietary standards are created by individual companies for use within their organisations and by their customers. Over time, successful proprietary standards may develop, through the market, into what are called de facto standards. In this case, it is the 'fact' that a great many people, possibly everyone, is making use of a proprietary standard, that makes it a standard—no formal standards-making process has taken place.

Other standards are created by a much more collective process. In these cases, committees of manufacturers, research organisations, government departments and consumers work together to draw up standards. These collective standards often start life as the ideas and technical specifications of university researchers, professional bodies, learned societies or private companies rather than being created from scratch. In fact, the quality of the technical specification can also be used as a way of judging the quality of a standard.

Different organisations have widely varying processes for the initiation, development and acceptance of a standard. The complexity of these processes is often a reflection of the number of stakeholders involved and the geographical reach of a standard. In addition, standardisation is not simply a process of resolving technical issues; political, economic and administrative factors often also come into play. A wide variety of formats for document drafts, working groups, committees and ballot processes exist which attempt to form, in one way or another, a common agreement through some form of voting or consensus-seeking.