Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Standards

A smallish rant.

There are a lot of IT departments out there who have rigid standards on every aspect of application development. Coding standards, naming standards, etc etc.

Unfortunately, most shops have adopted standards as a means of control. Standards put in place for thus reason are often an actual impediment to the process of software design.

Standards should exist for one reason and one reason only - to ensure reproducible quality in work performed. A standard should not detract from the process but should enable a quality bar.

1 comment:

Rick Schummer said...

The standards and guidelines are written for two reasons, to write the best darn code that is ultimately supportable and extendible, and to make it easier to read and understand the functionality of the code developed.

We use these standards and guidelines to enhance the communication of the requirements and the implementation between our developers and the developers we collaborate with on projects. It is sort of like making sure everyone speaks the same dialect of the same language.