Christian Heilmann has started a wiki – The business case for web standards (via Roger Johansson) to collect resources to put forth the case for web standards. He stresses on the point that one of the common mistakes in arguments is assuming that the other person is interested in web standards. The wiki also sports a place to hold the counterarguments. This will help in bringing out the real metal in the arguments, other than the shoulds and musts.
My experience has been that it is difficult to convince or get convinced about bottom line justification and ROI of web standards in a single argument or presentation. It grows on you. It takes some time to get the conviction. The wiki is a great idea, it can be a place for someone to read through and understand over time.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Nice! Will have a look now
Ever since I’ve got employed in my current job as web developer, I have stressed my coworkers and my management to NOT underestimate or ignore the web standards. It’s hard, but not only due to ROI ( it takes time to get old, high maintenance sites to a semi decent standard) , the management often have the phrase “if it works, don’t f*ck with it” in their heads.
One of my key arguments to get the sites and future sites to follow the web standards is that the usability of the sites will be ten times better, and the maintenance will drop to a low.
June 21st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
True, compliance to standards can reduce maintenance by quite a bit. It also helps a lot in debugging, since the side-effects get minimized.