Best practices is just code for common sense

I’ve just been through the second day of a project management course at work, and the most common phrase uttered by the trainer was best practices. Having never had a shred of exposure to accepted project management techniques and methods before, I’ve been paying serious attention, and what strikes me the most is the majority of what I’m being taught is common sense.

The standard project lifecycle and structure as prescribed by the APM is entirely common sense, from the concept and planning through to project wrap up. I’ve been running projects the way they describe without any formal training since I was 16 years old.

How they assess risk? Common sense. How they apply the risk assessment to the project? Common sense.

And all of it has been pushed under the auspice of it being accepted industry standard best practice, tailored a little to Imagination’s specific business approach of course.

So the next time you hear the words best practice and it’s a new problem domain to you, I bet a reasonable sum of money that what’s been explained is overwhelmingly just common sense.