This is one of the reasons I've found patterns to be an improvement - the community decides what to deploy after refinement, testing and validation.

Best Practices are business and mind-killing viruses - The very label almost stops any critical thinking of the practice before rushing to an end state through a questionable process (who really writes up their Best Practice as it actually happened? it is almost inevitably sanitized so that the end result seemed manifest destiny). Use a "best practice" as a case study, and make sure the case is analyzed for all it's pros AND cons, not pure gospel for "this is how all future such processes will run in the future without question." Even the best run companies cannot afford to sit in an isolated looping bubble, and expect to continue on their continued upward growth.

From the world of statistics, a single dot/piece of data does not make a trend, and from the world of risk management, basing future predictions on the optimistic trend lines, while ignoring the pessimistic and/or realistic, is a disaster waiting to happen.

Einstein stated "Keep things as simple as possible, and no simpler" - and my working theory (always being tested) is that Best Practices go several steps beyond trying to be as simple as possible, to make decision making for a new practice essentially a "no-brainer" activity.

Thinking - The New Best Practice

Best Practices or Benchmarking is a habit that is all over the place. I am coming across them constantly during my daily work day. Best Practices basically means that you as a company look across your own industry and other... [Read More]