Opinion Piece: Best practice is not necessarily best

When looking to improve IT services in an organisation, managers often turn to ITIL and other 'best practices' hoping to achieve results, although the results expected are often not clearly defined or understood. The reality is that just because something is defined as 'best practice', it does not necessarily mean that it is always the best solution for the specific challenge facing an organisation. Organisations may end up being dissatisfied with the outcomes of projects based on best practices as they are perceived as not delivering the expected results.

Organisations want to implement best practices but fail to understand the reasons behind why they are doing so as well as exactly what the problem is that they are trying to solve. This inevitably leads to unsatisfactory results, since it is difficult to adequately address a problem if it isn't well defined and understood.

Best practice at its heart simply means that somebody somewhere used certain methodologies that worked well in a particular context and others began to emulate this. Many organisations simply believe that following these 'best practices' will solve all their problems. This is not so - the problem must first be understood.

The real question managers need to ask about best practices is: 'best for
whom?' Context is all important. An approach, practices or even a
methodology that worked well in one context may fail in another. For this reason many frameworks now do not define themselves as best practice, but rather as 'good practice' which is accepted by industry as a sound practice for solving a particular problem or issue. As already stated, if the problem itself is not fully understood, simply applying defined precepts regarded as 'best' in a specific context will not necessarily achieve results.

The symptoms of a problem are a means of establishing the underlying problem but they can be misleading as they might indicate or relate to a variety of root causes. It is important to differentiate between the visible symptoms and the real cause of these symptoms. This is very similar to going to the doctor with complaints of a headache - the symptom could have many different causes, some more severe than others, but all of which will require different treatment. From a corporate perspective, the only way to discover the root cause of problematic symptoms is to probe and examine the situation, whilst relying on a deep understanding of organisation to guide this process.

It's impossible to just use a framework to solve a problem that is not defined and understood. If best practice frameworks are applied without understanding specific organisational needs, the end result is often a lot of 'busywork' that costs a large sum of money but fails to fix underlying problems or add value to the organisation.

This is not to say that the precepts defined in best or good practice frameworks are not beneficial to most organisations. They need to be applied in the right way at the right time. It is also not necessary to follow each and every process or bit of advice in these frameworks. A better and more economical approach is to choose those processes or the practices that fit the environment and to ensure that the controls that are in place are appropriate. The benefit of any best practice framework is that it defines possible ways to solve problems or create value. If you are not creating value - don't do it.

Understanding the context in which the organisation works, the industry, the customers, requirements, the organisations' place within the industry as well as the strengths and weaknesses and of that particular enterprise is required to defined a create a proper organisational strategy.

Applying the advice described in best or good practice frameworks should be a strategic decision. At its heart, strategy answers the question 'why?'

Frameworks on the other hand outline 'how' or tactics. And as any military man knows, it is impossible to work out the right tactics without having a strategy in place first. In order for a best practice framework to be effective from the onset, it is important to understand the organisation and to make strategic decisions.

Another issue to bear in mind is that good practice is not only about mitigating negative outcomes. Most organisations will look to implement these when they have a problem, but this is not the only reason. There is not a business case for any best practice framework - the business case is always achieving organisational objectives. Frameworks may assist with achieving organisational objectives but should never be the driving force.

Another pitfalls faced by organisations looking to implement best practice for the sake of best practice is that they will attempt to follow the book to the letter without understanding their particular context.

The truth is that frameworks offer good general ideas which need to be adopted and adapted to suit a particular organisation. Frameworks are simply good ideas -but still at the end of the day, just ideas.