Best Practices & Reference Architecture
Best practice is a management idea, now out of favour, which asserts that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc.
However, the notion of a best practice is not new. Frederick Taylor said as much nearly 100 years ago. “Among the various methods and implements used in each element of each trade there is always one method and one implement which is quicker and better than any of the rest.” This viewpoint came to be known as the one best way. In modern parlance, best practice.
History, however, is filled with examples of people who were unwilling to accept the industry standard as the best way to do anything. The rate of enormous technological change over the past century bears witness to this fact.
The Japanese word kaizen has been imported into Western organizational language and stresses the importance of efforts to improve constantly. This ethos is antithetical to the commonly accepted notions of best practice. In fact, best practice can breed a complacent attitude. Some organizations wear it as a badge of honor, believing that having adopted this technique, method or process that a particular organizational problem has been solved and no further improvements are necessary. But, in reality, best practice could be nothing more than mediocrity in a different context, a form of unplanned obsolescence.
- Wikipedia