Against Best Practices

IME "best practices" is a demand problem, not a supply problem. IE far more people want best practices than there are actual best practices.

Prospects and customers desperately want to know our "best practices" and then complain when we say "it depends" or something experimentation is required, as if we are hiding secret teachings from them.

For me this is more a personality test: people who just want solutions on a silver platter vs DIYers who want to tinker and distrust black boxes.

That's an interesting point, which leads me to my main reason for coming to these comments and leaving my 2 cents: there are way less best practices of there than one would believe by looking at all the places, people and firms offering some set of "best practices".

One thing I learned after many years working in consulting is that, more often than one would believe, best practices are just a compilation of whatever could be found (hopefully at least common practices, more often "things I could find that were minimally documented to be reusable"), with no serious analysis of their claim of superiority other than them being common.

So, first thing: learn to challenge the claim of "best". Best for whom? Under what context? What other not-so-good practices are out there, and why is this the best?

Second:if it's documented and evident enough to be treated as a best practice, it's probably fairly common knowledge already. Barring the commonality of really bad things being done out there, don't expect that you'll become much more than mediocre by adopting best practices. By the time they get to be called there, they are no longer any competitive advantage, more a basic thing you should be doing already - assuming they are indeed best practices (as per my previous point).

It's not that I'm against best practices as a concept, or compiled bodies of knowledge. Just don't expect them to do more than keep you somewhere in the middle. True leadership and innovation lies where best practices have not been established yet - together with all the dangers and mistakes you can make on uncharted waters.