Bob Lewis, formerly a writer of a column called “IS Survivor”, for Network World, has decided that “Best Practices” is a poorly used phrase.
The concept is simple: Provide an alternative to what’s usually bandied about as “best practice,” in a form that’s immediately useful to working IT managers, because much of what the industry calls “best practices” are nothing of the sort.
He then goes on to try to display what “Best Practices” are:
Many are descriptions of what one or two large corporations do and like, applied as prescriptions for every company regardless of whether they fit the circumstances or not. They’re one-size-fits-nobody recommendations. Other best practices aren’t practices at all. ITIL, for example, is more of a classification scheme, describing what rather than how. Then there’s a point that emerged from our Sarbanes-Oxley discussions: In many cases, “best practice” really means “basic professionalism.”
The Keep The Joint Running Conference then goes on to define a replacement for “Best Practices” which he calls th KJR Manifesto:
You can read the whole article at Bob’s Website, IS Survivor !
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