NCC Members have free access to this Guideline on the Principia website.

Imagine you're suddenly called to manage the information technology on a desert island and you're only allowed to take eight standards with you to help. Which standards would you take? After many years of projects involving standards development and standards implementation, this Guideline gives NCC's recommendations.

Just as in the BBC set-up you can have the equivalent of The Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare only in this fantasy you get ISO 9001 for Quality Management and BS 7799 (or the international version ISO 17799) for Information Security Management.

Of course we'd never let our members go without the relevant NCC Guidelines so you also get a few Guidelines', stuffed into a bottle and washed up in your first week.

Why are standards are so important? What do I want from them? Just in case you are one of those people who won't admit to needing standards let's just take a moment to try to understand the flavours that standards come in and how they may be used.

Standards come in two types: process and product. Process standards describe the 'how to'. They cut a path from the problem to the solution by showing you the procedural down to the local work instruction. For example ISO 9001 tells you that a good management system trains its staff and equips them to do their jobs; review the work and so on. Product standards provide specifications of how end-products should be such as: the coding standards for software; the transport protocols for communications; or the wiring in a cable. Both types of standard are benchmarks to be used as goals for measurement and improvement.

'The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.'