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Why Best Practices Suck

Why Best Practices Suck

Robin Moffatt

October 24, 2014
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  1. www.rittmanmead.com [email protected] @rittmanmead www.facebook.com/rittmanmead
    Why Best Practices Suck


    Robin Moffatt
    Principal Consultant, Rittman Mead

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    The Additional Problem

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    When taken from a 

    position of knowledge and
    understanding 

    best practices can be useful to 

    codify existing knowledge
    Good Best Practices?

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    Bad Best Practices!
    •Silver Bullets
    •“Laundry Lists” of settings to change
    •Random Jiggling
    •Absolutes without context
    […] “I will jiggle things randomly
    until they unbreak” is not acceptable.
    — Linus Torvalds, April 2011

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    Guesswork Is Risky
    If you don’t know why what you did
    worked, then you don’t know that
    you’ve not caused ‘collateral damage’

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    How Long?
    If you’re just guessing, you can’t
    honestly estimate the remaining
    time to solve the problem

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    Déjà vu?
    If you don’t know
    what the problem
    was, you’re
    doomed to repeat
    the same mistake
    again in the future

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    If It Looks Like a Duck …
    Even obvious problems
    aren’t always obvious

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    Knob Twiddler?
    Do You Want to be
    the Monkey or the
    Organ Grinder?

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    The only “best practice” you should be
    using all the time is “Use Your Brain”.
    — Steven Robbins / Tom Kyte

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    #EOF
    ✴ email: [email protected]
    ✴ web: http://ritt.md/rmoff
    ✴ twitter: @rmoff
    ✴ IRC: rmoff / #obihackers / freenode

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