I ended up writing a blog post in response to this: http://rtigger.com/blog/2012/11/22/design-standards-vs-code-standards/ http://rtigger.com/blog/2012/11/22/de

I ended up writing a blog post in response to this: http://rtigger.com/blog/2012/11/22/design-standards-vs-code-standards/ http://rtigger.com/blog/2012/11/22/design-standards-vs-code-... Synopsis: I like Michael Feathers’ comment that having Design Standards is much more valuable than Code Standards, but they need to be reviewed regularly in order to prevent stagnation and much of the same detriments mentioned in the OP.