[huckfinnaafb]

Working on a project with no set style standard, this article does a good job of voicing my frustrations. When tasked with inventing a new piece of the software, each designer, programmer, and manager tends to disregard all previous design decisions and create their own idea of what the project should look like. It's resulted in a totally inconsistent look, each page only bearing a passing semblance of the one before.

But a living style guide is worth nothing if the team members willfully choose to ignore it and pursue their own style agendas (and they are personal agendas, make no mistake). I've implemented some seriously ugly interfaces in the name of consistency, and the project is better for it.

The biggest hurdle is convincing management that this new flashy module simply does not mesh with the rest of the software. Design wants to impress, management is impressed, off to the nerds to implement it.

[mmonihan]

Totally agree here. This is really more of an experiment in self/organizational discipline more than anything else. We all talk so much about how some new technology is going to increase productivity; sometimes it just comes down to hacking the social dynamics of coding.

To your comment about new flashy modules that don't mesh, banks seem to be the biggest transgressors in this area.