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

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

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?

manpreet 2 years ago

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.