Scott Ambler, one of the initiators of the agile approach to software development, wrote an article that questions the term “Best Practice”: A very popular term within the IT community is “best practice”. It’s a wonderful marketing term, how could someone possibly argue about adopting a best practice, but does the concept really make sense? I’m not so sure. There are many examples where a practice that is considered “best” in one context is questionable within another. As professionals, it seems to me that we should strive to understand the context which we find ourselves in, and then apply the practice which is best within that context. In other words, we should really be focused on “contextual practices”, not “best practices”. Read more