My mission: Deconstruct and simplify a complex, multi-layered infrastructure pipeline with no standards, define those standards, create individual tools that conform to them, and address edge cases. Lessons learned from my experience enacting and implementing standards in a large organization.It is easy to sacrifice standards on the altar of temporary convenience. The solution: Improve the standard where necessary, even when it is hard. However, what do you do when you have _already_ offered sacrifices on the altar of convenience, over and over? Now there is a system laden with technical debt, and in order to move forward, that debt must be paid down.Come learn about our year-long journey to _write and enact standards_ for our tools (and, by extension, all APIs published by Google), _refactor our tools_ to conform to those standards, _deal with the edge cases_ that we could not or would not standardize, and ultimately **reduce the cost** of our infrastructure pipeline. Additionally, come learn about how I intend to automate myself out of a job in 2020.