Adam calls it well - and these definitely align well with the OASIS CAM template mantra IMHO!
Excerpting from Adam above:
1. Keep the standard as simple and stupid as possible. The odds of failure are at least the square of the degrees of complexity of the standard.
2. The data being exchanged should be human readable and easy to understand. Standards are adopted by engineers building code to implement them. They can only build if they can easily understand the standard (see above) and easily test it.
3. Standards work best when they are focused. Don’t build an 18 wheeler to drive a city block.
4. Standards should have precise encodings. ODBC was precise about data types. Basic XML is a tiny standard except for the precise encodings about the characters of the text, Unicode.
5. Always have real implementations that are actually being used as part of design of any standard. It is hard to know whether something actually works or can be engineered in a practical sense until you actually do it.
6. Put in hysteresis for the unexpected. This is something that the net formats do particularly well. If there is something in HTTP that the receiver doesn’t understand it ignores it. It doesn’t break.
7. Make the spec itself free, public on the web, and include lots of simple examples on the web site. Engineers are just humans. They learn best by example and if the standard adheres to the points above, then the examples will be clear and obvious.