Symptom: People would like to get involved, but can't find the time.
It may be that people who are affected by product design standards understand the importance of standards decisions and would like to be part of the process, but are so busy with projects that they cannot find the time. This makes a poor trade-off. While a few more hours will be spent on clients' projects in the short term, a great deal of time will be wasted due to the lack of standards.
One way to describe this problem is that the Engineers may not be able to afford the time to participate in standards planning. Another way to say the same thing is that the Standards Coordinator cannot afford to "buy" time from the appropriate stakeholders.
The problem is rooted in selling too much time to clients, and not setting aside enough for internal projects such as standards planning. In organizations that charge for their time, they may have set their price too low and not accounted for enough unsold time. Or they may not have given the Standards Coordinator budget to buy others' time. In other organizations, insufficient budget and time was set aside for overhead, leading people to promise clients too much for a given level of budget.
