The "best practice" Myths

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." Jan LA van de Snepscheut.

One of the purposes of problem management is to provide a set of best practices that span all IT disciplines. Best practice is based on the idea that the best way to learn is from the experiences of others. The goal is to establish the maturity of these IT disciplines within the enterprise, and acknowledge that different disciplines may be at different levels of maturity. The nature of problem management can be termed extreme in that all disciples are measured and evaluated. In many cases and studies, problem management is placed at the bottom of the service management pile. I have the alternative view that it should have its rightful place at the top of the heap.

Most executives in an enterprise consider IT spending to be wasteful and out of control. IT spending grew rapidly until the technology bust of 2001 and again repeated in 2008. The result of these busts was that in most enterprises, empowerment was given to the business unit to control spending, thereby disempowering IT.

The reality is that no modern enterprise can divorce itself from IT, and executives need to balance the reality of the cost of IT versus the automation benefits it provides.

The best way to reduce IT costing and contribute to higher service levels is to use best practices. These provide a high level of process discipline, simplification and standardization, and alignment with business goals. An enterprise will be successful if its processes are based on best practices and implemented with methods that are disciplined, repeatable and auditable.

The drivers for best practices are: globalization, technology, removal of boundaries, placing value on intellectual capital, and focusing on value as defined by the business unit user.

Goals

The goals of IT best practices are:

• Managing the demand for IT services
• Securing relationships with business units
• Analyzing where to invest IT funds
• Estimating the size of projects
• Managing project changes
• Rationalizing what services to offer to business units
• Deciding what information to put on a portfolio dashboard to measure performance

The benefits of IT best practices are: quality, consistency, efficiency and flexibility.

The characteristics of a best practice are:

• Proven coding practices (patterns), designs, reference architectures, or business methodologies
• Well documented practices that are widely used by peer groups
• Continually evolving practices

The promise and benefits of using best practices have led many enterprises to identify and establish them. In their haste to gain this advantage, some enterprises misuse the concept of best practice. Realizing the power of a “best practice” moniker, a bad practice is incorrectly promoted as a “best practice”. This is used to bludgeon team members into following or using it. Some common myths of best practices are:

• IWorkThereforeIAm: The most common myth around best practices is that if there is a solution to a problem (especially if the problem has been difficult to solve), then this solution should qualify automatically for a best practice. Since this is usually the first solution to the problem, it generates enough euphoria among the small community affected by the problem to declare it a best practice. This is incorrect, as a solution has to first mature into a practice, and then further into a best practice.
• GuiltybyAssociation: A practice that uses other best practices does not automatically become a best practice. This myth is most prevalent in development, where best practices are defined as patterns. However, simply using a best practice in creating a new practice does not automatically qualify the new practice as a best practice. It may increase its chances of maturing and succeeding as a best practice, but patterns should not be aggregated indiscriminately. Often they achieve flexibility and variability by introducing additional levels of indirection, and that can complicate a system at the cost of performance.
• OpenStandards: The complexity of current e-business applications and systems requires a set of standards, common templates, and open environments to facilitate interoperability and flexibility. However, the fact that a practice uses open standards does not automatically make it a best practice. Team members using standards can still produce poor results.

The IT Maturity Model
Best practices assist the enterprise in improving the maturity of their IT systems. The implication is that IT in an enterprise builds maturity in a staged manner and does not undergo a radical transformation. The road to transformation requires the following principles to be embraced:

• The long-term success of IT and improved value for the enterprise lies, to a very great extent, in IT’s ability to develop and sustain genuine relationships with business unit users.
• A view of the business unit IT customer that asserts that he or she is a valuable asset to be managed.
• Deciding that you want lifetime clients.

Gartner proposes the following IT maturity model:

1. Chaotic - Ad-hoc, Undocumented, Unpredictable, Multiple help desks, Minimal IT operations, Business unit IT customer call notification, Tool leverage, Operational process engineering.
2. Reactive - Best effort, Fight fires, Inventory, Initiate problem management process, Alert and event management, Monitor availability, Service and account management.
3. Proactive - Monitor performance, Analyze trends, Set thresholds, Predict problems, Automation, Mature problem-, issue- and change-management process, Service and delivery process.
4. Service - Define services, classes and pricing, Understand costs, Set quality goals, Guarantee SLAs, Monitor and report on services, Capacity planning, Business management, Profit.
5. Value - IT and business metric linkage, IT improves business process, Real-time infrastructure, Business planning.