SEGAS-00001 Writing a standard

Last updated: 4 August 2023

To be effective, standards must explicitly state what is expected of engineering teams. This standard prescribes how all future standards will be written. To ensure standards are easy to understand, unambiguous, and maintainable, they need to follow a consistent format.

Standards are comprised of a number of parts which are listed as requirements.
You must detail each one along with a description and any supporting
information.

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Requirement(s)

A standard MUST have an ID

An unambiguous and unique identifier is needed for each standard. This provides clarity and can be helpful in communication. This must be included as part of the page metadata.

layout: standard
order: 1
title: Writing a standard
date: 2024-03-18
id: SEGAS-00001
tags:
  - Example

A standard MUST have a title

A short meaningful name is helpful to reference in conversation. Don’t include words like ‘Standard’, ‘Principle’, ‘Pattern’ or ‘Guidance’ where they are redundant. It must be provided in the page metadata which will form the heading on the page.

title: Writing a standard

A standard MUST have a description

An overview for each standard must be included. This will add high level information about the collection of requirements that make up the standard. This section will be used as a rationale for the standard as a whole.

It must be no longer than 2 paragraphs and make it very clear whether this standard is relevant to the reader. It will be the first paragraph in the markdown file following the metadata.

A standard MUST have one or more requirements

The requirements are the explicit expectations of the standard. Engineers need to know what to do to meet the standard and will clearly state what MUST apply.

There must be details on the context and justification of each requirement, as this provides clarity and will add the spirit to the letter of the law.

When writing requirements, include a list of requirements after the standard’s description, which link to the context, description and any supporting information below. The site builder expects an unordered list of links, each linking to the header for that requirement’s section.

A standard MUST have tags

We use tags as a means to link entities in the body of standards. From principles, through standards, to patterns and guidance. Tags should be based on the relevant domain to achieve this.

Do not create tags based on other attributes of your standard, like ‘Draft’ or’Important’. All tags must be sentence case i.e. Starts with a capital and the rest lower case. These need to be defined in the page metadata and will be automatically displayed at the top of the page.

tags:
  - Source management
  - Security

A standard MUST show when it was last updated

Products and services are built to a standard and as time goes by standards evolve. Show the date the standard was last updated. The metadata needs to include the date in YYYY-MM-DD format (see below).

date: 2023-12-31

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Template

You can use the standard template when creating a new standard.

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