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EngineeringProcess5 min read
The cost of premature standardization
Standardizing too early locks in the wrong shape. Better to let three teams diverge for six months and then unify the version that actually worked.
There's a moment in every growing company when someone says "we need a standard for this." Sometimes they're right. Often they're locking in a shape before anyone knows what it should be.
Standards harden the wrong thing
A standard chosen too early is a guess wearing a uniform. It looks authoritative, so people stop questioning it — but the constraints that justify a standard usually only become clear after a few teams have tried the problem from different angles.
Wait for the third repetition
- Let two or three teams solve it their own way.
- Watch which version produces fewer bugs, faster onboarding, and the least drama.
- Then standardize on what survived contact with reality — not what looked tidy on a whiteboard.
Premature standardization is just early-stage opinion calcified into policy. The cure is patience, not a longer RFC.