Were concepts removed because of political reason X, Y, or Z?
No. Concepts were removed because of normal project management considerations. The basic constraint has been phrased in many ways, all of them hitting at the same underlying tension among time, scope, cost, and quality. Here are two examples: “You can pick what goes on the train, or you can pick when the train leaves the station, but you can’t pick both.” “You can have good, fast, and cheap – pick any two.” Fundamentally, the committee members felt that concepts are desirable but many (though not all) believed that they were still in design mode and needed more “bake time” – a formal poll of committee members in Frankfurt put the expected time at between three and four years – to get up to the quality of a feature that belongs in an international standard. Therefore, the two major options, and the ones that people generally argued for, were to either: • Prioritize (bigger) scope. Wait for concepts, and accept a delay to the rest of the standard including features that are already final
