1. Advice which worked in one situation - “we tried Agile, everyone should use it!”
2. Proven stuff like code review, which you call best practices when begging your org to implement it: “please let’s do it, I can clearly see how this will improve our org.”
These 2 examples represent locations on a spectrum: let’s call it “provenness”.
The author’s problem boils down to subjectivity - everyone positions different practices in different places on the provenness axis. The upshot of that is when one person says “we should do this, it’s obvious and/or it’ll definitely help” another person hears “we tried it once, you should try it too!” and then everyone has a bad time.
Then it gets confounded by everyone calling everything best practices - no matter how long ago or unproven the practices might be.
What would be handy is some generally agreed-upon yardsticks for graduating practices into or out of best practices status, plus better terminology to cover the spectrum of provenness so more sophisticated discussions can be had that account for the nuance and we don’t all talk past each other..
But then analyst companies wouldn’t get to make their glossy 2x2 charts, so it probably won’t happen.