UKC

... to expect a "best practice" approach for things to be available?

I was pondering this (seemingly) recent expectation of complex real-world situations to have some sort of prescribed absolute "best way" of addressing them.  It's quite a common request on UKC with regards climbing situations, and find it cropping up up in lots of other areas (it was a discussion on best practices for cleaning/storing data that triggered my musings). 

When and how did this expectation start to rise, I wonder.  Popularity of search engines perhaps?  As an example, when I started my IT career if you had a programming or hardware issue, you were either lucky enough to have a work colleague who had experienced the same issue and could help, or more likely had to spend (sometimes lots of) time going through bookcases worth of manuals, thinking deeply about the issue, and occasionally resorting to low level debugging tools, such as the UNIX adb utility, to trace what code the compiler had generated. 

Now almost all such issues can be resolved with a 5 min "google", which is great.  Why spend ages searching for answers to problems that have already been solved?  To me this is probably the biggest benefit of the WWW.  However, I do wonder if something he as been lost in the process - such as the ability, or maybe willingness, to actually think about things and generate solutions for yourself.  And I wonder if this feeds into the expectation of "best" practices to exist for "everything" as a short-cut to actually having to sit down and think.

Mere early morning musings I thought I would share.  Mostly to put off thinking about something that Google has no answer to

This is a point I have had issues with for years. Younger service engineers don't learn as well as my generation. 

When I started when you had a problem out in the field with a machine you had to work out what the problem was then how to fix it and this gave you a good understanding on how it worked. You didn't ring your works for advice because that normally meant going to the engineering managers office, asking to borrow the phone then standing in front of him looking like you don't have a clue whilst describing the problem to your service manager. 

These days the lad (or lass) gets to site, has a quick look to see what it is or isn't doing correctly, out with the mobile to ring myself or one of our more senior guys for advice. 

They don't ring me often though because I won't give them the answer, I point them in the direction and help them work out what to check to resolve the problem but some of the other guys take their hands and walk them over the finish line. 

I'd disagree with that. If your senior blokes aren't teaching them how to fault find it's down to them.

The reliance on Google isn't necessarily a young generation thing. I've now taken to copying and pasting 'dodgy' looking parts of reports from consultants/supply chain into Google to see which website they've copied their 'expertise' from.

OP: There isn't 'best practice' in industry, they is 'recognised good practice', and if you follow an Approved Code of Practice your deemed to meet minimum legal requirements, but providing you can justify your approach you don't have to follow it to the letter.

Oddly enough I have pretty much the exact opposite issue where I work in IT.

 The older engineers won't look for solutions, if there is a problem it is someone else's. If it isn't documented in a confluence page, then they pass the ticket onto one of the younger folk. If the ticket doesn't tell them the exact command to run or have a screenshot of what they should be look for they email saying the instructions are not complete.

The younger engineers look for efficiency improvements, how to automate things and look at the more interesting issues. Yeah they might have to Google some bits and bobs but what they don't do is email out about getting the status result from a curl because they are tool lazy to engage their own brains 

I think you probably mean 'relevant good practice' which is a term we use as regulators (and HSE also), generally to define a standard that we are satisfied is adequate. It usually refers to either a common practice adopted by others in similar situations and which the regulator has previously determined adequate ('relevant' is key here though) or to standards or guidance that we or international regulatory bodies (eg in our case IAEA) have issued. Sometimes, standards issued by industry bodies like ASME might be recognised as RGP too but that's not universal. 

The term 'best practice' does get used but we are very careful with it because, almost by definition, if you are the 'best' you are going beyond the legal minimum standard and therefore doing better than you have to.

We use ACoP fairly rarely in the nuclear industry (there is one for REPPIR ie emergency preparedness, and for various conventional HSE topics) so I'm not that familiar, but you should definitely be careful about not following them strictly if you are someone undertaking that activity. They have a special legal status above that of other relevant good practice which I believe means that, if there is an incident and you hadn't followed the ACOP entirely, there is a reverse burden of proof to show that your method was at least equivalent.

Of course all this is in the context of judging what is adequate and meets the law in a health and safety at work context; whether you are bothered about 'best practice' or otherwise when out climbing with your friends is a different question I would suggest that when someone comes on here asking a question like "what is the best practice way to belay?" what they are really looking for is what is the generally accepted safe practice that most well-informed people use, which is what we would call RGP. 'Best practice' for safety in this context might mean something like backing up the belayer with a second belayer on the dead rope the whole time, which in most situations would be considered unnecessary and going to far.

I thought it was a crossover with the medical and healthcare world. 

 From a climbing point of view the rise of regulatory bodies producing recommended techniques, BMC posters around most climbing walls etc etc has probably contributed to this as well (this is purely anecdotal obviously) people increasingly learning to climb by booking onto courses and being taught by professional instructors rather than much more informal teaching/mentoring by friends and family. 

I'm not trying to argue against any of the above of course as it's often the only way people can learn how to climb but perhaps it does foster a "My InStRuCtOr ShOwEd Mee ThIs WaY So ThIs Is ThE OnLy WAy" or "There must be an approved method of doing this" type mindset.

Oops. You're correcto +

Aaargh. Regulations 4(1) to 4(7) for Hazard Evaluation, has it been 3 years already?

Yes ACoP does have legal standing, but it's not an absolute.

Moving away from RGP is more common where you can't sensibly apply  some aspects of methodology, (e.g. DBAA and PSA in nuclear).

I spend quite a bit of time working on courses Training and Assessing new Instructors and work hard to dispel the idea that there is only one way of doing things. Its is difficult because when people have a low level of experience then a 'rules based approach' may be the easiest thing to give them but i'd rather start them on a 'judgement based' pathway as soon as possible.

Good practise is reasonably easy to instil, obviously poor practise quite easy to spot (but see below), 'best' practise is so situational that only someone in possession of all the facts can determine it (who am i, how am i feeling, what are my goals, who else is involved and what are they like, what is the environment like, what equipment is available...). Its common to see people leap on images on social media without all the facts deriding the practise visible based on a partial picture.

I find a great way to get people thinking about best practices is to become something midway between a mentor and a toddler. I'm constantly challenging staff and asking WHY they are using a certain process/standard etc. 'Because its best practice' just gets another 'but WHY?' response. Things have become best practice, standards or whatever for a reason, but its critical not to forget they are still individual tools that work in certain circumstances and knowing which to use when, and when to use something of your own come from experience. Hammers/nails etc.

I am currently in the process of creating some best practice guidelines for CAD and FEA in my workplace. This isn't necessary for people to do their jobs - everyone is managing to create models and analyse designs without guides, but hopefully we will suggest some more efficient ways of doing certain things. More importantly consistency of approach makes people's work easier to review, and easier for another engineer to pick up as roles change.

We are certainly finding situations where there is strong disagreement within the team on the best approach to some activity; luckily we are in the position that we don't have to codify everything or be prescriptive.

To give an example of where best practice guidance is useful: I often come across situations where I could do something in one of several ways and it is not clear which if any is best. For example to model a line of holes in a part I could create a single hole and then pattern it, or I could create a sketch pattern of points and then make one hole feature with all the holes. It is not immediately obvious which is better: sketch patterns are hard to edit, but if I want to add a bolt and washer to every hole then it might be easier to do if they are all in one feature. I don't really care how I do it, certainly not enough to weigh up the pros and cons, so it would be nice to just ask what the team's standard way of doing it is and do that.

In molecular biology it is "generation kit" old hands like myself love bitching about.

Our current students are able to follow a manual to pipet together stuff in a prescribed order, but rarely understand how the (say) DNA extraction column kits work they are happily using (and which cost a hundred times more per extraction than old school purification by precipitation).

This leaves them completely unable to trouble shoot failing experiments.

I annoyed generations of students in exams associated with practical courses by not asking them which reagents they had just used for a given procedure, but instead giving them the list of ingredients and asking them to explain the purpose and mode of action of each single one.

I think that a deep understanding of why things are done in a specific way, and why at some stages but not others it is OK to take quick and dirty short cuts is indeed lost due to google.

That said, the little bit I have to code (mainly bioinformatics stuff for transcriptome analysis*) is 98% copy/pasting together stuff I have googled from stackexchange, researchgate, and R vignettes, so guilty as charged!

CB

* and don't get me started on students and maths/statistics.....

This is very true.  And climbing does provide a nice illustration: there may well be lots of safe ways of doing something (which would all qualify as good practice) but careful consideration might well lead you to decide that one particular way was best.  I try to teach that this is a toolbox and being able to pick the best tool for the job is a skill in its own right.

practice = noun, practise = verb.  Think of advice versus advise.

I imagine that employer expectations play into it as much as employee ability or willingness. I’d find it hard to justify to my boss why I had spent an entire day working something out myself if I could have found the answer in 5 minutes online.

But I agree something has been lost as information availability increases. We’re out of practice doing things the hard way, which is fine until it’s not. I also often think about how many interesting conversations and idle ponderings no longer happen because of the impulse to just Google an answer. 

I think it will come down to the individuals mindset and what time they have available to them.

I do like puzzling through issues but its not a good use of time spending a day doing so when I could get the answer in five minutes via google. 

To take the cleaning/storing data. I guess you could reinvent everything from the ground up but you would generally learn the hard way that you missed something and that could be costly especially if it broke GDPR.

Its rare though there is a single best practice. More a selection to chose from.

I agree that is part of the problem but I find a lot of the young ones do t even try to fault find, their first recourse is pick up the phone.

We all need help and advice but have a go first. 

I've probably learned things most thoroughly by working through the steps myself, I think what you do is the right approach, even if generalisations about generations may not be accurate.

Once you've taken something mechanical to bits, and/or really thought about it, you remember it for life and it can feed in to solving other problems, mechanical know how can 'cross pollenate'.

Funny. The common spelling mistake is purely due to pronunciation where practice=practise but advice!= advise.

What annoys me is when people haven't Googled before they ask me.

99% of my answer are from Google as I'm unlikely to be the first person ever to encounter a particular type of programming bug.

I had put (vaguely amusing) pedant tags onto that, so it didn't sound quite so strident when I wrote it, but UKC seems to have stripped them off!

Thinking about some youtube custom car building videos I've watched, where the mechanics have to be stopped from investigating a fault in a new engine (with it just being sent back to the supplier), with an explanation to camera explaining that it's just how mechanics can be in liking to get to the bottom of things, I think there can be a personality/brain type which enjoys figuring things out, thrives on the 'aha' moment.

I recently came across an 'outdoor provider' offering a 15 week course that would lead to 15 qualifications. One of which was 'climbing instructor'. I didn't see any precursor requirements.

I did wonder how you could become a climbing instructor in a week...

Its not a generalisation of generations,  the older hands are all  pre cell phone you have to work it out, the younger ones are all post cell phone. 

Fair enough. I think I'd still want to try and work it out, because then I'd know what I was doing in a way which could stay remembered, from having learned how during the process.