Standards and their use

With all the upset a few years back about ISO 29119 software testing standard with words about it being a money making venture (see earlier post), it being to “old” school, heavy weight (documentation, process, etc) and other issues. I finally heard another good point I thought was possibly valid. It was stated that the standard lacked “accountability” with what it required. This is true and something for me to think about, but I wonder if a standard should require accountability. The idea of the standard is to provide a baseline set of ideas about testing (not best practice, not state of the art, not bleeding edge art, and not even average-poor practice). Once you have a baseline it can be subjected to review, analysis, and improvement since baselines are never perfect.
However the issue of accountability is interesting and maybe does not belong in the standard itself but to users of the standard. For example, a company might require the use and that a project be accountability to the baseline once tailored. This would be true of regulatory and contractual (company to company) use. These are done outside of the standard by interested stakeholders. I agree our software industry needs accountability but I am not sure if a standard-baseline should require accountability in it directly but should be done from the outside mechanisms.
More thought is needed.

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