Advice on standardization

wordsout by godfrey rust
colleagues >

Advice on standardization*

for all who have endured the process

Don’t knock a screw in with a wooden mallet.
Eat to keep your strength up. Read the notes.
There’s time to fix it when it goes to ballot.
Avoid French lawyers. Never miss the votes.

Requirements are all flexible conditions.
Use acronyms as sparingly as tears.
The Devil writes the Terms and Definitions.
Be abstract. Stay away from engineers.

Trade-offs usually bring recompenses—
don’t flog a lame duck’s dead horse very hard.
When someone says he’s looking for consensus
ignore the handshake: read the business card.

Respect the process, if you can’t get round it,
and use it when you don’t get what you need.
The clearest logic never will confound it:
what’s best is always what has been agreed.

*or "standardisation".