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About Best Practices |
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If you have anything to do with web design, you will inevitably be asked to ensure that your site, pages, or applications follow "best practices." Best practices are, of course, a marvelous idea. Who could bring a reasonable argument against anything that is "best?" I would urge you to always use best practices in everything you do. But while you are attempting to include best practices in the outcome of your web project, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind. The first is that the term "best practices" has become a buzzword (actually, buzzwords). The person who mentions the need for best practices may be trying to offer something helpful or impress someone, even though they know little about web technology or methods. The idea of following best practices always sounds like good advice. The problem with "best practices," as with many overused phrases, is that the meaning has become diluted or lost. A lot of people who ask that you follow "best practices" really want you to follow common practices. This can be discovered by asking the person who suggested "best practices" to discuss a methodology for identifying those best practices. Their approach is usually something along the lines of, "Survey five or six other companies that seem to have figured this out, and do what they are doing." If you discover that three of the companies are using "Method A," and the other three companies are using "Method B," "Method C," and "Method D," you will probably get a lot of pressure to use "Method A" for your project simply because it seems to be the consensus. Does this mean that "Method A" is a best practice? The fact that three companies (out of your survey group of six) are doing it probably means that there are no terrible outcomes to the method. Otherwise, why would those three still be using "Method A?" However, this does not mean that it is necessarily the best method. To truly discover best practices, a more accurate approach would be to find out which company is achieving excellent results in the area of your project and learn what they are doing. Even if they are the only company using a particular method, if it is yielding great results it might be worth a try. The second thing to remember is that best practices are a moving target. A friend once pointed out in a paper he authored that victory in several major armed conflicts could be directly attributed to the fact that the winning side understood how to best deploy a new weapons technology. In other words, the side that was first to discover best practices for something new in the technology of war was victorious. He gave several examples in which both sides had the technology, but one side somehow figured out a way to use it to their advantage. I don't know much about the strategies of war, so I'll stick to what I know. Once upon a time, the best method for getting software patches to your customers was to send them various media (tape, disk, etc.). Once internet connectivity became fairly widespread, a few companies figured out that they could just put the patch on an FTP server and send a letter or e-mail with directory and authentication information to allow the customer to download the patch. Eventually, HTTP and web browsers proliferated, and some companies figured out that they could put all the patches on the web server, design navigation to get the customers to the list of patches, and call it a day. Customers have greater control over the process, and can download any patch at their convenience. In each of these changes someone had to go first. Someone had to realize that technological changes had made possible a new approach that would (might?) yield better results. Best practices of one era ("One day turnaround for shipping your diskettes!") were rendered irrelevant in another. So, what does all this mean for your web project? Maybe nothing. But in some cases you may do well to follow the example of a single innovator that is achieving great results. In others, you may wish to conduct a thorough analysis of desired outcomes and available methods, looking for a brilliant insight that could give you an early advantage. "Best practices" are wonderful. Just make sure they really are best practices. |
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