What Is a Best Practice?
“Best practice” is a term that you hear thrown around frequently in IT. Inevitably, someone finds a way to do something and then labels it a best practice. This is important for you to note in your career because sooner or later you will cross paths with someone who claims to have the elusive silver bullet to all of your problems in the form of a best practice.
Where people get into trouble with this term is not so much the actual practice, but the belief that they have developed a best practice.
First, let’s define a best practice (i.e., let’s look at what Wikipedia says): “A method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark.”
This is a good definition for a term I feel is used loosely at best and is very misunderstood at worst. This idea is reinforced by this Institute of IT Professionals article, in which one commenter mentions that he likes to use the term good practice instead of best practice.
This brings up a good point. Can simply calling a best practice a good practice make it more successful or palatable? In this case, I think it works for making a practice more palatable, but as for success, that’s a different story.
I think that the use of the term best practice may be appropriately used internally at a company, but the company should use the term good practice externally. ZDNet.com takes it a step further and says it’s time to blow up all of the best practices myths. The question now becomes "Why do we use this term at all?" Are there ulterior motives behind its use? I think Hildy Gottlieb’s blog gets to the bottom of that question.
I don’t want any reader leaving with the impression that there are no “best practices.” In fact they do exist, but they have to be very generic or looked at from a higher level. A good example would be this: All companies need a firewall protecting their internal data centers.
Finally, Morebusiness.com unlocks what is probably the key to successfully implementing best practices. They recommend borrowing and adapting what others have done and tweaking it to fit your needs. I feel there are both good and best practices that may work well internally, but they have little value outside your organization. The key thing to remember when it comes to best practices is that what cures others may kill you.
