The process of managing electronic content is increasingly complex, significantly more so than traditional print distribution. Over the past decade, there have been significant investments in the standardization of various parts of the supply chain of published information. Some of these standards have been successful, some less so. This article describes some NISO standards that impact electronic resource management and reasons why some have been successful and why others have faced challenges in adoption. Since there are limited resources available to standards development, questioning what makes a project successful or not, will help to improve our project selection moving forward.