Techniques and Good Practices: Standards

It doesn’t matter if a team is small or large—its members should all follow the same coding and design standards. This standard is typically accompanied by the programming model, which is a general guideline on how to use the architecture, any specific patterns, and the like.

Why do standards fail?

If a standard is not met, we have to find and eliminate the reasons for this. Possible reasons include:

• The standard is overwhelming. It is either so large in scope that nobody will ever read it, or it is so precise that it does not leave any space for the developer’s creativity.
• The standard was not defined by the developers and, in turn, has never been accepted by them. Like the process, a standard has to serve the developers, not act as a guardian over them. Therefore, the standard has to be developed by the developers and adapted to their needs.

Engage the developers during standard adaptation

Standards and programming models tend to have high acceptability with the team if these were developed by the developers themselves and are very short and simple. We cannot expect people to read 100 pages of documentation and remember and internalize the contents at the same time. It is easiest to start with an industry standard and adapt it accordingly if necessary. Therefore, if the standard is not overwhelming but is still not accepted, we have to ask the developers to change it for the better.