What to do when best practices aren’t best for me

Every month there’s a new book, process, or technology promising to radically improve my ability to deliver software faster and better. Equipped with new tools and knowledge, I want to go all in and make it work. Except for some reason or another, the shape of the proposed solutions doesn’t quite match the shape of my problems. Something is blocking me from applying these wonderful new ideas to the specific context I face. After facing this problem head on for 18 years, I’ve come to realize all these great ideas are telling me to do the same thing: Force myself to validate my assumption as soon as possible as rigorously as possible. Working from there we can contextualize these new ideas as we learn them and apply them in big and even small beneficial ways. When you see it, it becomes so much easier to take the underlying core concepts and apply them in real situations. You’ll be able to walk away with ways to apply these practices in your own contexts.