There are no Best Practices
Pet peeve warning. I keep on hearing questions – what are the best practices for Agile, or … .
There are no best practices – only good practices in your current context. The whole idea of Best Practices implies that you can learn them once and apply them in any context. I prefer the notion that there are some ideas. Sometimes they work well, sometimes they don’t. Try lots of small experiments and learn. Also the idea ‘Best’ implies there is never any room for improvement – ‘Good’ is a better word because it holds open the promise that tomorrow might be better.
So please no more best practices – only “Good Practices in the Current Context”.
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March 10, 2010 at 1:03 pm | Sellers
‘Best Pracitce’. Words are such slippery things. Let me offer a slightly different interpretation of what a ‘Best Practice’ is. This is no more or less valid than what I am hearing you best practice to be – something applied across a larger domain.
My definition of ‘Best Practice is a practice which, within a specific context, is normal and expected. A team not executing this best practice should explain the reason for dropping this practice. For example, an organization has adopted Scrum and has defined the 3 roles of Scrum as best practices. If you are running a Scrum team without a Product Owner, you should have an explanation of your rationale for dispensing with the role.
March 10, 2010 at 3:53 pm | Mark Levison
I agree with your point – that if you do something different you should always be able to explain why. However I still don’t like the word ‘Best’ – when people hear they assume there is no room for improvement now or ever. That’s the part I’m allergic to. I prefer to always be asking the question how can I improve. Example – traditional stand-ups asked the question “what did you do yesterday”, “what will you do today?”. Many teams replace that with complete. In larger groups it might make sense to do the stand-up by story. If we had the traditional view of ‘Best’ then these improvements wouldn’t be discovered or put into play.
March 10, 2010 at 7:16 pm | Jason Little
Couldn’t agree more. What works for a small, single team, low complex project won’t necessarily work for a larger, multi-team project.
I usually refer to it as “just gimme the freakin answer so I don’t have to think” syndrome.
March 10, 2010 at 8:46 pm | Mark Levison
FWIW I do think that many practices apply in most contexts its just I always ask myself before applying what is special about this context and what to tweak. Examples I’ve not yet come across a team (of greater than size 2) that didn’t gain something from a daily standup.
March 12, 2010 at 12:54 am | Siddharta
Yes there are no “best” practices, but there are good practices. I think everyone understands that a best practices is not *always* applicable, but just that enough people find it useful enough that they ought to be thinking hard about whether they need to be doing it.
Re: daily standups. I’ve found that a small colocated team has enough natural osmotic communication that a daily standup doesn’t add value. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing though regular chit chat.
March 12, 2010 at 8:14 am | Mark Levison
Siddharta – I wish it were so, far too often I do hear people asking me what the best practices for ‘xxxx’ are. Hence my change to the word good.
As to your comments about the daily standup – I’ve not had your experience but its a great example of context. If its working for you then its right. Nonetheless for all my clients even he co-located ones continue to recommend daily standups.
March 12, 2010 at 10:37 pm | Kirk Bryde
From Wikipedia: A best practice is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive, or reward that is believed to be more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. when applied to a particular condition or circumstance.
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A given best practice is only applicable to particular condition or circumstance and may have to be modified or adapted for similar circumstances. In addition, a “best” practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered.
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As the term has become more popular, some organizations have begun using the term “best practices” to refer to what are in fact merely ‘rules’, causing a linguistic drift in which a new term such as “good ideas” is needed to refer to what would previously have been called “best practices.”
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Because of the use of best-practice as a buzzword, some people are asking if a better term could be found. This could be something such as “better practices”, or “current thinking”.
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The term “better practices” seems to seek better ways, which may even lead to tweaking the suggested practice to make it even better. …
@Mark, I understand what you’re saying, but I think the Wikipedia definition covers it quite well, including your points that context is important, and there’s always room for improvement. I think you’re taking the word “best” too literally, rather than taking the well-defined and well-known term “best practices” for what it REALLY means – as described by Wikipedia (for example). Dare I say that you need to use the term “best practices” with the meaning and in the context for which it’s well-known? ;)
March 13, 2010 at 1:08 am | Siddharta
I think the motivation behind the question is really to see where they stand with respect to the industry. The meaning I understand from the questions is “what are other people doing that we should be looking at”. In that sense, best practices is synonymous with industry standard.
March 13, 2010 at 3:38 pm | Mark Levison
Kirk thanks for the comment. You’re right the wikipedia defn gets across some of the nuance. My problem isn’t wikipedia it’s human beings who hear latch on to the word best and assume it means we’re done and can stop improving. If one of those humans reads this post and never thinks about the phrase the same way again then I’ve succeeded.
March 13, 2010 at 6:35 pm | Kirk Bryde
@Mark, on that note, I couldn’t agree with you more!
March 30, 2010 at 2:41 pm | Kevin Thompson
@Mark – I’ve just started reading “Practices for Scaling Lean and Agile Development,” and see this on page 4:
“There are no best practices–only adequate practices in context.”
Great minds think alike!
April 4, 2010 at 12:47 pm | Ari Shinozaki
In some circles, people refer to best-known-practice – rather than best-practice. It has the advantage of avoiding there-is-no-better-practice-like language. The condition and context elements still apply.