School of Specs How standards actually get madeOverview

TR 21.900 · version 20.0.0 · 97 clauses · Overview · 40 minutes

How standards actually get made

3GPP and the IETF both turn arguments into documents that separate companies can build from, and they go about it in almost opposite ways: one decides in named committees, the other refuses to vote at all. This course is about the machinery, not the technology — what a release is, why a version number has three digits, what a change request has to look like, and how a draft becomes an RFC. It is built on 3GPP's own working-methods document, TR 21.900, and on the RFCs that describe the Internet standards process, so every claim links to the clause or the paper it came from. Where the material on this machine does not settle a question — who the Organizational Partners are, how a 3GPP vote is weighted, what today's IETF areas are — the chapters say so plainly instead of guessing. Seven chapters, a morning's reading.

Start at chapter 1 Sit the final test Look at the document first

This course was written against TR 21.900 version 20.0.0, and built from a source register generated 2026-08-04.

Same subject, different depth: quick start · in depth

The document, all of it

One block per clause of TR 21.900, in the order they appear, sized by how much text the clause holds. Lit blocks are taught in this course.

Open the whole of TR 21.900 as a page

The chapters

Part 1 Why any of this exists

  1. 1 Why anybody writes a standard down The problem a standard solves, the reasons 3GPP and the IETF each give for their own rules, and why neither body can oblige anyone to do anything. 6 min

Part 2 The 3GPP machine

  1. 2 The shape of 3GPP, and where the data stops Technical Specification Groups, working groups, the permanent staff, who owns a document — and the several things about 3GPP's structure that no file here can tell you. 6 min
  2. 3 From an idea to an approved version The work item that has to exist before anybody writes anything, the rapporteur and version 0.0.0, the three stages, and the two version jumps that end in change control. 5 min
  3. 4 The change request and the release The two ideas the whole of 3GPP hangs on — a change made only by a numbered form, and a set of documents frozen together so a system can be built from them. 6 min

Part 3 The IETF, and reading the record

  1. 5 The IETF, and the life of an RFC A body with no members, work done in areas and working groups, a draft that is deliberately not a publication, and a document that is never edited after it appears. 5 min
  2. 6 Two ways of deciding 3GPP decides in two named steps and records a verdict per document; the IETF refuses to vote and hums instead — and where the 3GPP voting weights actually live. 5 min
  3. 7 Reading either body's paper trail yourself What a 3GPP number, version and file name tell you before you open anything, where the decisions are written down, what "shall" and "MUST" mean — and the questions the record cannot answer. 6 min

Testing yourself

Every question at once

39 questions, chapter by chapter, on one page — for revision after you have read the course.

Open all the questions

The final test

15 questions drawn across the whole course, marked at the end. 70 per cent to pass, and every miss says which chapter to go back to.

Sit the final test

What this course is built on

Chapters
7
Words written for you
7,557
Clauses covered
43 of 97
Figures from the document
0
Abbreviations
0
Published versions
20
Checked sources
120
Sources this course cites
109

The document · Words · History · Documents around it · Every source