Promulgation of standards

2.4 Promulgation of standards

Standards must be available to the intended users. They must also be followed and kept up-to-date with the user environment.

2.4.1 Availability

Two common methods of providing standards to the standards user are currently popular.

The foremost method of publishing standards is by way of a standards manual. This is, usually, a large loose-leaf binder with the organization's standards filed in some logical order. It can also be a set of binders, each covering some subset of the total standards set. The loose-leaf binder approach is a convenient and generally inexpensive way of keeping the standards filed, up-to-date, and accessible.

This approach has some drawbacks, however. Unless some official updating method is used, the holders of the manuals may be careless about making changes to their copies as new, revised, or obsolete standards are added, replaced, or removed. Using an incorrect standard is sometimes worse then using none at all. Loose-leaf pages, especially in a heavily used book or section, frequently become torn out of the book and lost. A common excuse for not following a standard is that the offender's standards book has been misplaced, borrowed, or was never issued.

Finally, in a large organization, the cost of providing and maintaining a set of standards books may be significant. One way to cut this cost is to restrict the distribution of manuals to some subset of the using population. However, that solution has the usual effect of diminishing the use of the standards because of the increased difficulty of access.

As more organizations adopt Internet and intranet technology, one way to counter some of the more severe drawbacks of the book-style manual is to make the standards available on-line. In organizations with widespread use of terminals, there is an increasing trend to having the full set of standards available for access through the terminal network. That way, employees who want to look up a standard need only call it up on their screen. In addition, on-line access eliminates the problems associated with correcting and updating the manual; the only copy of the standard that is affected is the one in the database. Once that is changed, everyone has access to the new version without having to manually update his or her own book.

Like all methods, though, the on-line one has its drawbacks, not the least of which is cost. In a large organization that already has widespread terminal usage and a large database capability, automating a standards manual will be a relatively inexpensive situation. For organizations that do not have the facilities already in place, putting the standards on-line probably is not cost-justifiable, since there will be limited automated access and the book method will probably still have to be used as well.

2.4.2 Compliance

Standards that are not followed are frequently worse than no standards at all.

Standards are intended to improve the overall quality of software as it progresses through the life cycle. When a standard has been established and implemented for a particular subject, the organization as a whole expects the standard to be followed. If it is not followed, some things may be done incorrectly or lead to errors on the part of those who work in other portions of the life cycle.

The role of the software quality practitioner, and specifically the standards coordinator, is to monitor and report to management on the adherence of the entire computational organization to the standards that have been implemented. It is not the role of the software quality practitioner or the SC to enforce the standards. Enforcement is the responsibility of management.

Not every case of noncompliance with a standard represents disregard for, or lack of knowledge of, the standard. In some cases, lack of compliance may be a signal that the standard is no longer appropriate or applicable. While it is not practical to investigate every case of noncompliance with a standard, it is necessary to look for trends in noncompliance that may indicate missing, faulty, or even incorrect standards. Observation of noncompliance trends can give clues that may indicate the need for companion standards to those that already exist, additional standards that complement those in place, or modification or replacement of existing standards. The software quality practitioner or the standards coordinator is responsible for identifying such cases through an ongoing review of the standards and their continuing applicability.

2.4.3 Maintenance

Standards must be kept current with the changing computational environment.

No matter where the standards have come from or how they are made available, they will quickly fall into disuse if they do not continue to reflect the organization's needs. Standards become obsolete as mainframes, operating systems, federal regulations, business emphases, and the like change and evolve. Probably no installation is the same today as it was as little as a year ago. Further, some of the subjects of standards have also changed. Thus, some method of keeping standards up-to-date must be provided. Clues that it is time to review a standard include increasing instances of noncompliance, installation of new equipment or support software, expansion into a new area of business emphasis, the advent of new government regulations, and so on.

The standards coordinator is the person primarily responsible for standard maintenance, but anyone in the organization can point out the potential need for change. Just as in the sequence for requesting changes to software, there should be a formal standards change request and a standard method for processing that change request. Once the request is received, the standards coordinator can verify the need for the change, present it to the standards generating group, and get the change made and distributed.