Eat your standards: they’re good for you

I didn’t like vegetables much when I was growing up.

This might have been due to my immature palate, or it might have been because the quality and variety of vegetables in British cuisine in the 1970s were limited. I knew that I was supposed to eat more vegetables, but why should I when there were plenty of burgers, chips and beans to go around? (Do chips and baked beans count as vegetables? Technically, yes, I suppose, but not aesthetically or nutritionally.)

I think that technologists sometimes have a similar attitude to standards. We know that we should follow them, we know that they are probably good for us, but we also feel that they cramp our style, and that they are rather less fun than they could be. This is especially the case when we have the figures of central governance, change boards and process approvals looming over us, asking us whether we have implemented our standards and whether we can prove it, the technical equivalent of asking whether we have eaten our vegetables and whether we have clean plates to show for it.