If you’ve ever shopped for an article of clothing online, you probably appreciate standards. Especially if you’re a woman. Medium and large are very subjective, and if you’re tall, getting those ankles and wrists covered can be a struggle. This is where we can see that there are very little to no industry standards which can and do cause consumer headaches. Thankfully, IT is rife with standards, and that’s a very good thing.

Understanding standards is an important part of managing your IT. Of course, understanding which standards apply to you and why are also important, because as I mentioned, there are many and they all don’t apply across the board. A good place to start is to look at what requirements your industry may have. For example, if you are in the medical industry you will likely be beholden to HIPAA standards. Even if the standards in your industry are not governmentally enforced, there may be standards within your industry that are used to improve transactions, like those in the real estate industry that standardizes data transactions on property, lease information and more.

Having a grasp of what your industry standards are, and what sort of results you would like to see in your own organization will help you identify the complete set of technology standards you’d like to implement in your own business. Of course, standards are not static and will evolve with your business, and that’s the beauty of technology standards, they are made to drive forward motion. By implementing standards in your technology, scaling becomes much easier and growth comes with greater ease.