I would like to find the person that originally coined the phrase ?Best Practices?; I bet that he is a descendent of the person that coined the phase ?One size fits all?. ?Best Practices? are no more ?Best? for anyone, than are ?one size fits all? clothes.
Imagine if you will, that one day a ?wardrobe consultant? arrives at your house, throws out everything in your closet, (ok except for the tattered old jeans that you just insisted on keeping) and replaced them with a limited selection of ?one size fits all?. Now there are certainly different ?one size fits all?, you have the kid?s versions, the women?s versions, and men?s versions, but that?s about it. Have you ever also noticed that the ?one size fits all? are usually for the larger ?all?. What if you are only a size 2 (really tiny for us uninformed men out there), and you are expected to wear an outfit that looks like it was originally modeled by Shamu.
Let?s say that the whole ?size? thing doesn?t bother you. Maybe Shamu was a role model, or maybe you just want to be the largest environment you can be, or at least act like it. Not that there is anything wrong with that. What about err ?environmental? issues. What if you ?wardrobe consultant? was from say Key Largo, but your environment is in Fargo. Their recommendations for shorts, sandals, and tank tops aren?t exactly going to provide you with the protection that you require.
Where am I going with all of this? Currently in IT we have this insatiable appetite for standards and ?Best Practices?. Overall this desire to all be alike is going to be more detrimental than it is worth. Oh sure, there are right and wrong ways to do things, and some ways are always going to be better than others. But what is best for one environment is not going to best for another. Just like your girlfriend who looks great in a short plaid skirt, put it on you and ? well you get the picture (unfortunately so did I, yuck).
What is a CIO or IT Manager to do? How do they know they are doing something the ?best? way. The short answer is, ?they don?t, but that?s ok?. Let?s expound on that a bit. The only way to determine what is ?best? for an environment is, just like clothes shopping, you have to try a few things on and see how they fit. Some environments are going to want availability above performance, some will want flexibility instead of rigid standards, and still others may want something that just works and they don?t have to think about (kind of like most men picking out a tie for Sunday church service).
Process are good, it is even better to learn from the mistakes of others. I once read a saying that went something like, any man can learn from his mistakes, but it takes a truly wise man to learn from the mistakes of others. But don?t let the latest IT ?fad? have you completely redesigning your environment because people now say that mounting your servers upside down improves airflow resulting in a better running box (though wouldn?t that be neat to see in the next datacenter you walked into).
Tom
