WordsOut poems by
Advice on
standardization*
For all who have
endured the process.
Don’t
knock a screw in with a wooden mallet.
Eat to keep your strength up. Read the notes.
There’s time to fix it when it goes to ballot.
Avoid French lawyers. Never miss the votes.
Requirements
are all flexible conditions.
Use acronyms as sparingly as tears.
The Devil writes the Terms and Definitions
Be abstract. Stay away from engineers.
Trade-offs
usually bring recompenses—
don’t flog a lame duck’s dead horse very hard.
When someone says he’s looking for consensus
ignore the handshake: read the business card.
Respect the process, if you can’t get round it
and use it when you don’t get what you need.
The clearest logic never will confound it:
what’s best is always what has been agreed.
*or "standardisation", depending on which standard you use.
Written in 2007.