Why make things consistent?
Things should be consistent. When we're talking about I.T. artefacts (how we build databases, how we structure database tables, how we write code, etc etc) we should build them consistently. This ought to be obvious. But wherever I go, I see quite the opposite. Many software applications, or I.T. departments, or enterprises, are basically a collection of various artefacts, all of which have been built INCONSISTENTLY. And then people wonder why it's so hard to manage all this. The reasons things become inconsistent are many. Here are a few examples: - Many different developers looking at the same application over time, but not paying any attention to existing patterns. In other words, for whatever reason (maybe they haven't been trained to see in this way), they don't actually SEE the pre-existing patterns. - Developers think they have a better way of doing something so they just start doing things their way, without any regard for pre-existing patterns.