For those of you who don’t know, Brad Abrams is one of the guys behind the largely consistent .NET Framework – in particular Brad looks at things like naming conventions of classes that are part of the .NET Framework and convinces disparate teams produce something that looks like it was made with the one pair of hands.
Consistency is key in any software development project and I think its important to have someone who is goaled with making that happen. Using tools like FxCop is a great start – but in the end you need someone who is responsible for making sure that the code-base is asthetically consistent.
Thats easy to do on a small team, especially when there is an obvious team leader - but as teams get larger it becomes less and less obvious who has the final say over these things. Who is the Brad Abrams on your team? Have you ever allowed them to force significant redevelopment of the code base in the name of consistency and maintainability?