I have read and been told by researchers and vendors over the years about a “best practices” for this technology or for that type of deployment. I have discussed best practices with clients as a consultant, as a vendor promoting products to a potential customer,and as a consumer of a particular technology or design. The ‘best practices’ concept seems to come and go over the years. Recently, the frequency of mention of ‘best practices’ has been dramatically increasing in my world. I am not sure if this is due to a general trend in the industry, or just myself being back in the financial services world.
I have always been very wary of ‘best practice’ when it is mentioned and when it is applied I tend to scrutinize it. Here is why.
1. Lessens the sense of ownership. After all, you didn’t really create the solution. You followed the ‘best practices’ for the particular solution you were deploying. Sure, you added a few twists and exceptions, but really the bulk of it was already predefined. If something goes wrong, it is not totally your fault. After all you followed best practices right?
2. Stifles innovation and creativity. You don’t have to come up with a solution, create or design a system to handle a particular problem. It is already created by ‘best practices’. Obviously the best practices are proven and smarter people came up with them than your team. Why re-invent the wheel?
3. Who declared it to be best practice? I have never seen scientific reasoning for why something is considered a best practice. Typically, the rationalization is that everyone else has done it this way, so it is the ‘best practice’. If your competitors have all done it this way, then should you really spend the time figuring out if they have done it right? If they all did it, then obviously it is the best way to go.
4. Used as manipulation by vendors. Every vendor tries to manipulate ‘best practices’ to favour the particular set of technologies they are trying to sell you. They often do this by ‘teaching’ the customer about best practices and how their product suite best fits. It also assists them to influence your decision making process. By touting ‘best practices’ they can elegantly neutralize employees ideas on how to solve a particular problem when their solution may not fit. They are not personally telling you that your ideas are wrong, the best practices are. They are just helping you understand so you don’t make a mistake.
I do believe ‘best practices’ have their place. A project team should consider all ‘best practices’. The ‘best practices’ provided by your current vendor, ‘best practices’ provided by your current vendors competitors. The team should research ‘best practices’ that are not vendor related. These should be given weight, but less weight than that of the project teams opinions.
Ideally, the team comes up with the design that meets the requirements. Once and only once the team is comfortable with their solution, it is vetted it against the ‘best practices’. Using this approach, the team feels a sense of ownership for the solution. The team created something based on requirements and their skills and knowledge. They took into consideration the many ‘best practices’ available, tweaked their solution where necessary after careful and conscious thought. If done correctly, the end result is a solution where a sense of ownership is felt, any innovative and unique ideas were considered and incorporated, best practices were given their due consideration, and the best vendor and technologies are chosen.
