Best Practices

In the past year I've stated a phrase so many times that I began to wonder what I really meant.  I'm sure you've seen the phrase many times before, both in my writing, in job postings, in management briefs, all over the place, but what does it mean?  The phrase is:

"... best practices ..."

This is kind of a loaded question.  I could state that what I mean by best practices is that it is something that I think is important to do.  That would definitely boost my ego, but for the most part when I call something a "best practice" it means something more. 

For the most part when I call something a best practice it is because it is:

An established sets of practices, procedures or methods used to achieve an optimal result.

Now, who defines what an optimal result is in this context?  There are a number of different contributors:

• Academia.  Some things are called best practices because those in the academic world have studied, debated and decided that the best practice in question meets the criteria.  While those in academia do provide some input into best practices, the problem lies in the fact that the academic world is never as complex and complicated as real life.  So, take their opinion with a good dose of realism.
• Standards Groups.  These people create certain standards and they should, theoretically, know how to make the most effective use of the standards.  They are usually more accurate with their proclamations, but, once again, ideal situations are difficult to find and some of their best practices do not work in real life.
• Industry Consensus.  This is something that the majority of people in an industry think is a good thing.  It is usually decided upon by a grass roots movement by people who actually do the work and not strictly academics.  Their opinion is highly valued as it is more likely to provide meaningful results when used in the correct context.
• Organization.  Based on the way that an organization does things, there may be some specific practices that need to be done by an organization to improve the end result.  These best practices may fly in the face of other best practices read and used over the years, but because they are specific to an organization they are probably the most relevant.  (Please note that if the organization changes, but the best practice doesn't then this becomes nothing more than a waste of electronic ink.)

All of these opinions, however, must be tempered with the fact that they were created with certain pre-conditions in place or under certain technological constraints.  A best practice is only a best practice if it actually applies to your situation.  Minor variances can sometimes be ignored, but if your naming standard was based on 6 character RPG standards, they probably aren't applicable to .NET 2.0, so some (un)common sense needs to be used as well.