Their System doesn't work for you

You tried to teach me
to be the system's tool
but you missed what
I was smart enough to see
That their system doesn't
work for you or me
Whoah, Don't believe what they say is true
Whoah, their system doesn't work for you

-Anti-Flag (Their system doesn't work for you)

Chris,

You complain about 15 competing standards, and that it's fragmenting communities. I think in some cases yes, I don't think the solution is combining I think the solution is millions more. What if there was millions of "standards" that nested in one another with tradeoffs instead of rules?

Rules are an authoritative, prescribed direction for conduct. I'm paraphrasing from the dictionary there a bit to cut down on the parts that don't apply to the conversation. We have a lot of rules that I'm constantly asking like Chesterton's Gate why is this here.

Trade offs, instead, are explanations of conduct to achieve a given outcome. Similar but different. It's like the difference between a user story with business value in it and one without. I'm going to say loudly without glossing it over,**user stories that don't contain the business value are worthless.** Rules that don't explain why they're in place are just as useless.

The Software Design Life Cycle didn't start with the Agile Manifesto, in the same way that 90's punk didn't start with Gilman Street. If we take the analogy a bit further I think the Agile Manifesto is the lighter version of Gilman's rules, no major labels, don't be a dick, etc. They're the first tradeoffs that aren't even strict "It's not that we don't value the things on the right we just value the things on the left more" for starting up a conversation about what should be in place for your team to work.

"Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better."

-W. Edwards Deming

Designing the system that you and your team work in is paramount to success. This should be inspected and changed with great thought and intention. A framework of preset rules doesn't do this — worse, it kicks it in the groin at the end of an otherwise seemingly great date.

This is what I mean by nested standards. The companies I've seen thrive the most are the ones that have a Mission Statement that everyone understands, a Vision statement everyone works towards, and a cascading set of tradeoffs to allow for both of those to succeed while maintaining as much autonomy for the people below them as possible. What does our company do? Where is our company going in the foreseeable future? That's about all the top should be focused on, and course correct as little as possible with those. From there we get into, to make X happen we have decided to implement Y (Solving the Chesterton's gate problem) and as far down the company those go they should be inspected more frequently.

Change agent facilitators, whether they're one person on the team who drew the short straw, the manager, or the scrum master needs to facilitate these conversations else they will happen without any guidance. The sign of a good facilitator is bringing forth the hidden things without disrupting the peace and letting them be talked about in the open. This is what they should be judged on, this is what we should be looking for in these positions.

You did everything fucking right
you followed the system's guiding light
and now you fucking pushing me to get a job
when you don't like the life you've got
you fucking corporate whore
Whoah don't believe what they say is true
Whoah their system doesn't work for you.
You can be what you want to be
Don't have to choose to join the corporate army.

- Anti Flag (Their system doesn't work for you)

With corporate changes in the air, have you talked to your team about what and why they're doing the things they're doing? Do you have that change agent who brings the shadowed things to light? How often is your team adjusting the system they're working in instead of blaming someone outside the team?

I hope that helps.