Selection of standards

2.3 Selection of standards

Standards must be selected that apply to a company's specific needs, environment, and resources.

Standards for almost everything are available, often from several different sources. As described in Section 2.2, standards can be obtained from industry and professional groups, other companies, private consultants, or the government. They can also be prepared in-house. The major concern, then, is not where to find them, but to be sure that the ones being obtained are necessary and proper for the given organization. Even in a particular company, all the standards in use in one data center may not apply to a second data center. For example, the company's scientific data processing needs may call for different standards from its financial data processing center.

Many things can affect the need for standards and the standards needed. As stated, different data processing orientations may call for specific standards. Such things as runtimes, terminal response times, language selection, operating systems, and telecommunications protocols are all subject to standardization on different terms in different processing environments. Even such things as programmer workstation size and arrangement, data input and results output locations, training and educational needs, and data access rights often are determined on a basis that includes the type of processing as a consideration.

Not all standards available for a given subject or topic may apply in every situation. Language standards, particularly selecting the languages to be used, may have exceptions or not be applied at all. A particular standard life-cycle model may be inappropriate in a given instance or for a specific project. Data access or telecommunications standards may be modified or waived to fit a particular project or installation.