Went down a rabbithole on the old web and I learned that "Bloodletting" was a common medical procedure for the better part of 3000 years. I'm kind of spellbound by the duration- it was one hell of a lindy effect. Our first evidence of its use appeared in Egypt, as indicated by the Ebers papyrus, an Egyptian medical papyrus dating to circa 1550 BC (link).

If you are hip in the academic world you might know that medical "doctors" are differentiated from PhDs in that they were practitioners and associated more closely with barbers during the middle ages (link). The red and white stripped pole of a barber shop was meant to represent blood and bandages... as the bloodletting procedure would often be recommended by doctors but carried out by barbers (link). In the 1830s, Bloodletting was so popular in Europe that more than 40 million (!) leeches were imported into France for the procedure (link).

By the end of the 19th century of course we had figured out that bloodletting was bad science. It was no longer considered a "best practice" and it was a bad idea to recommend it as a medical procedure.

What is a "best practice" really though? As far as I can tell its often a cliche or a discussion dead end for: "I don't know why everyone does this thing but they do, so just do it, and don't ask questions." Alternatively, in the best case, best light, they are perhaps industry conventions or short hand expressions intended to save time.

...Swinging back to bloodletting. You may be surprised to learn there are medical professionals still doing it.

It turns out there are a handful of situations where (in the 21st century) bloodletting is actually useful. Of course they changed the name to "therapeutic phlebotomy", but yeah its still used as a treatment for hemochromatosis and polycythemia. What about the leeches? Yep, there are circumstances where they use them too- leeches are used in certain surgeries (link) like when someone gets a finger reattached or if a limb is having trouble getting blood out after a trauma.

Modern bloodletting is certainly wild, but I think it illustrates a point nicely- We should all think critically about WHY a best practice is considered a best practice in the first place, and even more critically about our individual situations. It might not be the right practice in a situation or something that might be considered "wrong"... might actually be useful.

In my current profession (software stuff), we are overloaded with "best practices". There are a LOT of best practices in the software world, but they are not to be discussed or challenged. You should be wise to accept the canon of Robert C. Martin or Joel Spolsky as infallible.

Maybe we should take a look at something like this agile diagram¹ and reconsider if this methodology is the optimal way to do agile?

In my former profession (sales), "best practices" were rarely dogmatic (except maybe "Make sure you send thank you cards"). However, we rabidly attempted success modeling on everything and anything. I quickly found out as many others did that things which work for another person might not work for you. Hell, it might not work for you even if it is working for everyone else.

My contention about most "best practices" we should probably be more aggressive in challenging them rather then less. Industry conventions as I pointed out can be outrageously incorrect (e.g. single use rockets in space missions, Monocropping) . Even if they aren't outrageously incorrect there are still latent improvements that we might be forgoing (often for a catch acronym) because we aren't thinking critically about these concepts.

(Note: The waterfall picture was a joke to see how many people would pick up on it)