Analyzing Processes behind Web Service Standards Development

Anticipatory standards such as Web service standards are artifacts 'designed' by consortium-based standards development organizations. Intricate processes followed to develop anticipatory standards are not well-understood. Recently, the D-S-N model was developed to explain these processes, and suggested that these processes contain cycles of design (D), sense-making (S), and negotiation (N) activities. In this paper, we provide an initial report of a case study that empirically analyzes archival documents of SOAP standard development. Our findings reveal that the D-S-N model is applicable to the Web service standardization process followed at W3C but this model provides only partial explanation of the process, and that design and sense-making are the core activities of the process. Our findings also show that participants spent most of their time discussing technical issues and identifying action items to be performed, large organizations dominated the process, and negotiation is the least frequent activity.