There’s No Such Thing as Best Practice

Abstract

The Agile movement presents itself as a carrier of "Best Practice", tools and techniques that any self-respecting development organisation should follow. Most of these practices were first written up from a few iconic projects and other groups’ attempts to imitate them – without the original organisation, technologies, or personalities. Now we have a lot of useful ideas and can even be certified to prove we know what we’re doing. But is this right?

Do we really believe in reproducible methodologies? Surely organizational context trumps everything – which is why some Agile adoptions don’t last. Or are there fundamental concepts that we can apply everywhere? And how can we figure out what’s fundamental and what’s circumstantial?