The term “best practice” is only appropriate for the most refined and effective practice of any particular discipline the moment right before the world ends – anything else, as you say, is simply good practice.

I’m extremely lucky to have great clients who don’t think this way, but I still see this definition cropping up regularly. Oddly, there seems to be a cultural component to this too; in my experience (and confirmed by others’) some nations are much more slavish in their plagiarism than others.

I’ve not personally come across it being used as some pseudo-political argument for cutting corners, as your post suggests to me. I’d even go as far as to suggest that people using the term in this way don’t actually give a crap about “best” anything.

Given the presented context, “best practice” here sounds like hateful business speak for “acceptable minimum effort”. And to me this is entirely counterpoint to what “best practice” means.

For me, best practice is about doing your research thoroughly; it’s about getting your project spec to be as comprehensive and considered as possible; it’s about ensuring the end result is the very best it could be, given the scope of the project and the anticipated outcome.

Maybe it’s too open ended a question.

I’ve come across a variant of this phrase in the procurement of ‘IT Solutions’ which is best of breed. Strangely, more prescient than the originators of the phrase realise since they almost always buy ‘dogs’.

I suppose it’s more the label and the blind application of so-called solutions I’m rejecting.

This would make a great lunch time discussion topic for the IA Summit (if not a fully fledged presentation).