A Note on Consistency

Published

When distributing work across a team of individuals, the most important process to nail down is communication, however the second most important process to focus on is consistency.

The reason that consistency is so important when working with other team members is that it scales and distributes cognitive load and historical context across the team. This distribution only happens if the team solidifies their discoveries and solutions as patterns that everyone else can learn from.

The benefit of consistency is that new team members don’t need to ask why when they implement a shared pattern in their work. Note that asking why for new patterns is still incredibly valuable, and great teams often invest in great documentation around the reasoning behind their patterns to help answer the why questions, however an individual doesn’t need to ask why when following consistent patterns in their work.