Are standards really Rocket Science?
Standards are certainly filled with plain old common sense. Well written standards also have the combined wisdom of many technology leaders who have taken the time to think through all of the items that they would include when performing a particular function. Standards save you time and help you to be more productive. They also show your auditors and your senior management that your software processes are based well accepted industry best practices. This is essential in organizations that need to show compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. We prefer working software There has been much discussion about Agile developers preferring working software to volumes of (unused) documentation. I have personally seen large organizations write volumes of documentation on software lifecycles that simply became “shelf-ware” and were truly useless documents. In my practice, I have tried to be Agile enough to use just enough process and documentation to get the job done effect
