How to encourage team members to follow file name conventions? [closed]

Question

I'm the sole software developer on a team of graphic designers and 3D artists. Our guys are amazing at producing creative works, but most of them are having trouble following file naming conventions. This is a headache for the manager when issuing reviews to the client, and also to me, since consistency in the files makes my development much smoother.

Our conventions are as follows:

• Folder names should be in UPPER CASE
• File names are in Title Case, apart from any included acronyms, which are UPPER CASE: e.g. "SICEEP Aerial.max", or "Townville Metro Aerial 01.psd"
• All folder and file names use spaces, not underscores
• All working project files (like .max files) should be prefixed with an acronym of the project name

There's more conventions specific to the design software used, e.g. what files need to go under the "Photoshop" folder, how to best name modelling files, and where to put outgoing files. All in all the conventions are about a page.

The comanager has sent out a few reminder emails about these conventions, and our last measure was putting a paper stand with the conventions on each team member's desk. The files are still named haphazardly and in the wrong place. My manager says the team just aren't reading the conventions. If it helps to know, the company culture is seriously relaxed and very blameless.

Does anyone have any ideas or advice?

Answer 1

Those conventions sound really odd to me. One, I've already forgotten them. Two, spaces in filenames and folders can be very hard to work with. Three, case sensitivity in directory names is usually avoided. Basically this is all to make scripting and organizing easier, but your convention seems to do the opposite.

They might just be used to living and working in a place known as "the rest of the world," and really hate your conventions and so far the best way to deal with it for them has been to just ignore them. It sounds like this has been effective for them so far.

You should probably find out why they prefer not using the conventions and why they don't. Actual communication will go a lot farther than more signage.

Answer 2

This is a headache for the manager when issuing reviews to the client, and also to me, since consistency in the files makes my development much smoother.

Sounds like a fairly one-sided benefit so far.

Have you asked them why it's so hard? Do you have regular team meetings where you can air this and discuss the implications rather than sending emails and paper stands (whatever they are)?

• What does it matter to you?
• Do they realise why it's important to you?
• Exactly what are the consequences?
• Can you change?
• What does it matter to them?
• Do you realise why they don't care or the effort caring takes?
• Exactly what are the consequences of them changing/not changing?
• Can they change?

Sounds like a there's a pretty major gap in communications and knowledge of overall process flow. A simple, semi-casual get-together might fix that without too much angst.

Answer 3

This is something that should really be addressed at the management level. If this is indeed an important requirement, and people keep ignoring it despite efforts to remind people and communicate the importance, then there should eventually be some sort of consequences for not doing things correctly.

But of course you are not the manager, so you are not able to change that. Here are some things which you might be able to propose from your position:

• Simplify the conventions. A naming convention that needs a page of rules is over the top. I see no benefit from this complexity. As a developer, you only care about consistency. I doubt the clients care about the capitalization of things, if they see the files (inconsistency would look messy but otherwise, why would they care?). I would propose a new convention that is a sentence rather than a page, such as "File and folder names will be lower case with spaces rather than underscores." A logical directory structure should probably be another sentence or two at most (unless you are working on a huge, complicated project).
• Automatically rename things to meet the convention. If the above doesn't work or is not possible, why not a simple script that automatically renames all files to meet the guidelines? This should only take a couple of hours to bash out--this isn't very complicated. Problem solved.
• Refuse to work with files in the wrong location. If X files are supposed to be in directory Y, then your software should only look in directory Y. Any time you don't find the appropriate file, then go back to the original creator and ask them to put it there for you (rather than moving it yourself).

Answer 4

First, have you talked to them about why the conventions are needed and what problems it creates when they aren't followed? People don't follow rules like this unless they understand why they are needed. If you have flexibility in how the rules are set up, then sit down with them and create a better naming standard that everyone not just you can live with (and, really, lose the spaces in filenames!!) People do better with rules they had a hand in developing. If there is no flexibility due to the rules being a requirement of some third party software, then explain that.

But right now there is quite literally no reason to follow rules they didn't choose and regard, most likely, as stupid. They get no benefits and there are no consequences for failure to follow the standard. Why on earth would anyone choose to follow those standards under those conditions?

Next, once a standard is agreed to by everyone, simply reject the work until it is complete and complete includes properly named. If they miss a deadline because they didn't name the files properly, then they missed the deadline and should be the ones to take the heat for it. There must be consequences for failure to adhere to the standards or they are simply recommendations not standards. Laid back, fun workplaces with no management are ineffective places to work.