Standards And Methodology Guy

"Standards and methodologies don't work!" says the developer.

"How would you know?" says the Standards and Methodology Guy. "You never follow them."

And therein lies the crux of the matter.

Standards and Methodology Guys deserve, perhaps, the contempt with which they are viewed by real programmers (or real developers or real testers). They suffer from adaptive schizophrenia, in that the methods they espouse are usually implemented in a fragmented, partial manner. Therefore, they are like Don Quixote de la Mancha, always chasing the Holy Grail of the perfect methodology and always bearing sad witness as the methodology founders on the shoals of development reality.

One of ExtremeProgramming's most attractive aspects is its self-referential integrity. Failure to adopt one of the twelve principles will weaken the others. From a Standards and Methodology perspective, the principles enforce themselves.

"Standards and methodologies don't work!" says the developer.

"How would you know?" says the Standards and Methodology Guy. "You have never followed them."

"Neither have you." responded the developer.

I believe that is really the root of the problem. Standards and Methodologies are created in isolation from actual software development. I find that most software developers do want to learn how to improve their programming, but are not too keen on producing "artifacts" and audit trails to prove that they are actually doing their jobs.

I think the name StandardsAndMethodologyGuy needs revision, since "standards" is a loaded word. At least, clarify what standards you mean. If you mean "all indentations should be 2 spaces, unless directly preceded by a curly brace", then I agree. As currently stated, you paint anyone for methodology or standards on par with the LUser. It's not a fair typecast - though I have seen my fair share of 'BuzzwordMasochist's. -- JeremyDunck