Standards: Lean, Mean, or Pointless?

4. Move quickly and with common sense. Paralysis by analysis is still rife in the industry. Several weeks, and sometimes months, are spent defining or deciding which standards to roll out and how. This is another sign of missing points 1 and 2. As my father always said, “Stop your navel-gazing!” Now, as fond of my navel as I may be, I would much rather make a quick decision based on sound logic and move forward at the risk of having to revisit it later than to make no decision at all while endlessly weighing all my different options. Rework is often less costly than lack of progress, and the two should not be confused.

5. Borrow heavily or collaborate. Avoid the not-invented-here syndrome. Industry bodies have done a lot of the heavy lifting and industry consensus when it comes to basic standards, so use them. In the absence of an existing standard, where some cross-company consensus is needed, quickly find a like-minded third-party company and work together. 

Before I was a CMM guru I was a Software Test Manager. I know, I must have done something terrible in a previous life, right? But whenever I think of standards I’m reminded of what a young test analyst said to me at three in the morning when I was relentlessly instructing him on how to fill out a proper SIR (system investigation request) report: “Dammit, Catherine, we are not saving lives here!”

As he went on to berate the inanity of the process, and as I started to question the meaning of life, I could not deny that the guy had a point. What was it all for? I just wish I had remembered that point a couple years later once I’d moved on to CMM. 

But I remember it now, and often. 

The world of standards needn’t be expensive, fruitless and frustrating. In fact if done pragmatically and—I really must stress this again—quickly, standards do become the enabling backbone of something truly amazing.