Validation professionals, you must change the way you communicate with developers. Teach your developers the parameters of their work. Don't use words like "rules", "compliance" or "quality systems" since developers get glassy-eyed when these terms creep into conversation (they're dreaming about Half Life 2 – I can vouch). Use words like "parameters" or "environment", since these are words developers understand (they are part of the technical vocabulary). Since most developers I know spend a considerable amount of their free time looking for free software on the Internet and playing video games, they'll get very excited when they hear that your department is going to allow them to use expensive development tools and provide them access to your 7 CD library of reference code. This is developer nirvana, and you've taken the first step in controlling your development environment by defining software standards. See? That wasn't hard, was it?

Developers, you need to change the way you communicate with your validation professionals. First, these words must leave your vocabulary if you wish to work in a validated environment: hack, crack, decompile, shareware, free, freeware, GNU, hex and Linux. Okay, not that last one – I got carried away. Validating a system is all about showing strict control and any word that does not imply that control cannot be used. Here are the words you can use with impunity: engineer, re-engineer, design, re-design, alter, author, develop and write. Doesn't quite have that ring of "leetness", does it? It will be okay, though; leetness doesn't pay the bills, whereas a career in writing validated software will likely allow you to purchase Halo 2 for everyone you know. Next week: Developers and Validation Professionals: Presentation