There’s a group of people trying to create a coherent set of international standards for documentation and documentation management. The first one will be specifically about managing software documentation projects. The exact title is the ISO is the “International Organisation for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission Joint Technical Committee 1 , Subcommittee 7, Working Group 2, proposed International Standard 26511″ or

ISO/IEC JTC1/S7 WG2 NP IS 26511

Luckily for us, the project editor Phil Cohen has chosen to use the snappier title of “Project 11″, and I think (hope) that naming will continue for the rest of the planned standards.

I’m one of a dozen or so authors in addition to Phil, and as of today there is a list of 75 or more reviewers. The project still needs reviewers–sign up at the main Project 11 site, and be part of an international team!

The next standard in the roadmap will be ISO/IEC 26514, for people who are designing and developing end user documentation. It looks like my colleagues over at IEEE/PCS will be leading this effort (all together now… it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all…)