This is a very common topic today, Standardization. Be it processes, documentation, development, organizations standards, evaluation standards, promotion standards, requirement gathering, trainings, design models, templates or even meeting of minutes. Everyone talks about standardizations. It seems people want to have the same structure, same behaviour, and same results everywhere. I am sure they realize internally that each system, unit, component, business is different. But still standardisation is selling like anything. It is believed that it will help to achieve better results. Better than ever before. This as gone so deep that people even want humans to be standardised. It is expected that each human will behave in the same manner and will give the same output.
I do not how much it is true or not. But I personally do not believe much in standards. I believe in the individualities of humans and extend it to the reverse order to systems and applications as well. To me whether it is humans or application, each one is different. They have their own individual and unique behaviour, requirements, mindset and awareness. Isn’t this uniqueness and the differences makes life beautiful? Isn’t this difference of viewpoints making us talk to each other, argue each other and force us to generate new viewpoints? Isn’t that it is these differences because of which we can make choices; it gives a chance to look at things in difference angles. Be it religions, communities, eating habits, ceremonies, mind sets, psychologies, cultural differences, all those have made life romantic and this planet a lively place.
I understand that it is difficult to manage the madness which is generated from all these differences. But that is how life has been always. To avoid this madness or to keep it under control, humans are not using the standardisation techniques. e.g. Performance evaluation of a person in a team is tough task. To quantify it many techniques have been adopted. Few examples are number of points in discussion forums, number of knowledge documents, number of publications etc. All these are good, but only if a person wants to do it. Because these have become performance evaluation criteria, all kind of crap is being written. Secondly, why one should be forced to write when he does not want to do it. The same energy can be used somewhere else, rather wasting it in this non-sense race. There are so many other things to do rather than to keep on dumping e-media with garbage.
To me humans are unique with each having different attributes. They should be used as per individual characteristics and not as per the desire of your seniors or managers. How would life be if all humans start behaving in the same manner, like robots? The whole fun of life would be gone. Just a simple thing, Imagine everyone around use is wearing same clothes, have same hair style, use same perfume. I got scare even while writing about this. I wonder what will happen if it really happens.
The last point is how long does these standards remains? Even in the small context these standards have to be changes because of the new development in products, requirements, business models, changing needs and change in people and time. But still about 40% of time is being spent in trying to maintain those standards. One of the Dilbert’s strip might be a best fit here.
Well, whether you prefer standardisation or not, I am sure everyone like to laugh. So, keep laughing, be happy.
Arundeep Singh
