Best Practice

I'm just putting it out there: I hate best practice.

Who's to say that your practice is better than everybody else's? Does your practice work in every scenario? Can you quantify your 'best' claim? Is there some independent body that will verify it for you? Probably not. But it does make for catchy marketing material and might just get your sales guy his new boat.

ITIL (the Information Technology Infrastructure Library - a framework for IT service management) talks about good practice throughout its books. This seems a lot more realistic to me. Good practice means you are doing things the right way based on the variables you understand and the specific situation you are in. You've taken into account the nuances of the customers configuration, the budget, the available resources, all the documentation and what is widely practiced in your industry or sector. With all that in mind, you want to produce the desired outcome and so you follow good practice.

Another idea from ITIL is the 'adopt and adapt' mantra. Adopt and adapt really means don't just blindly follow what someone else does because they say so, but instead use those methods and that knowledge and apply them to your situation in a manner that will give you the required outcome. We see speakers and writers all the time singing about 'this way worked for me and it will work for you if you follow my words to the letter.' But we're all different and each scenario we encounter - even the same scenario on a different day - is different and needs approaching differently. 

So don't just blindly follow 'best practice'. Adopt and adapt to your situation and turn it into good practice. Best might not be very good after all.