On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 22:38, Wayne Wilson wrote: > Thomas Beale wrote: > | > | Some of you no doubt get the UK e-health letter, but I think it's worth > | posting the link to this story "IT projects fail because best practice > | not applied" > | > I find 'best practice' to be most often a management technique, rather > then an engineering practice. Having engineering practice available is > no guarantee of success, it all depends upon the people doing the work > and the managment support structure in place. These day's engineers do > a lot of work finding the 'marginal' limits in order to reduce costs.
It seems to me that 'best practice' in IT projects very often ends up as a slavish adherence to some formulaic design or management "methodology", in a focus on process takes over from a focus on outcomes and after a while, everyone switches off their brains and just follows the prescribed script. Huge reams of design documents and other "essential" paperwork are spewed forth (often by automated tools). If the project is lucky, after a year or 18 months, suddenly someone wakes up and says "Hey, all this stuff we've been doing doesn't look right". The foregoing is not an argument against using best practice methods, it is just pointing out that they are no substitute for thinking, talking to people, prototyping and testing and other activities which involve meaningful engagement with end users and stakeholders. -- Tim C PGP/GnuPG Key 1024D/EAF993D0 available from keyservers everywhere or at http://members.optushome.com.au/tchur/pubkey.asc Key fingerprint = 8C22 BF76 33BA B3B5 1D5B EB37 7891 46A9 EAF9 93D0
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
