Synopsys Press publishes The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Synopsys Inc., under the imprint of Synopsys Press, has published The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards.

The book, authored by Karen Bartleson, senior director of community marketing at Synopsys, shares the author's 20 years of real-world experience in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry working with colleagues, competitors and standards organizations to bring about standards such as SystemVerilog, Liberty and UPF.

The text includes concepts to help participants understand the climate in which technical standards are created, and it offers ways to improve the standardization process.

The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards is based on posts from Bartleson's blog, "The Standards Game," www.synopsys.com/blogs/thestandardsgame. The topics and posts provided a starting point, with comments from readers incorporated in the book. Thirty individuals in the field of high technology provided peer reviews of the text.

One such reviewer, Jan Rabaey, Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California at Berkeley, said: "It is a safe bet that each of you picking up this book at some point in your life must have been confronted by what you consider a 'good' or a 'bad' standard. We all agree that standards are an essential component of making diverse things (or people) interact harmoniously and, if done well, can accelerate development in a certain field and lead to better outcomes for all. In contrast, ill-conceived standards most often lead to stagnation, fragmentation, and ultimately inferior results."

Rabaey continued: "I truly wish that anyone involved in the creation of standards in any field reads Karen's book very carefully. Based on her experience in the field of electronic design automation, Karen has synthesized a clear and transparent set of guidelines on what it takes to create 'good standards.' I couldn't agree more with her insights. My only wish is that the book should have been available many years earlier. It would have avoided a lot of wasted time and misguided efforts."

Real world examples from the EDA industry and other technology industries illustrate how each commandment has been applied – or not – for creating effective standards. The concepts presented in The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards are applicable not only in the EDA industry, but also in countless technical standards efforts with the goal of producing effective standards. A touch of humor is provided by cartoons from Rick Jamison, social media strategist at Synopsys.

"Karen provides a much-needed analysis of and invaluable lessons learned in the process of birthing technical standards," said David Peterman, Wireless EDA at Texas Instruments. "This work provides a clear guide for overcoming the serious pitfalls that have plagued standardization efforts in the past.

"Karen's practical Ten Commandments are based on time-tested real-world experience and should be mandatory reading for anyone collaborating with multiple suppliers seeking to bring them together to cooperate on any kind of a standard. Karen has eloquently blended together historical case studies with recent technical standardization experiences that not only generally educate the reader, but also provide very specific practical guidance regarding avoiding the legal and ethical challenges that can seriously harm corporate intellectual property positions and/or significantly slow valuable industry standardization efforts. No question that future standards, especially future EDA standards, will be more likely to become reality after careful study of this book."

The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards represents the first volume in the recently introduced Synopsys Press Business Series, but it is not the first publication produced by Synopsys. Over the past 15 years,

Synopsys has written and produced technical publications such as the Reuse Methodology Manual [Springer], the Verification Methodology Manual [Springer], the Verification Methodology Manual for Low Power [Synopsys Press], and the Low Power Methodology Manual [Springer]. Because standards and interoperability can have a sizable impact on an industry and its consumers, the topic of technical standardization is an ideal topic to initiate the Business Series of Synopsys Press.

The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards is available for a retail price of $29.95 hardcover, $19.95 softcover and $14.95 eBook through bookstores and online, including through Happy About and Amazon.com.