>I've been thinking lately about Best Practices. What does this term mean to you? Are there any Best Practices that you follow?

Best Practices:
My definition: tried and tested techniques and approaches to design, programming and implementation that result in high quality and robust products. Also, the use and enforcement of regulatory standards within the business area within which the product will be used (e.g. CFR11 part 2 FDA electronic records and signatures rule for the pharmaceutical and research industries, accounting standards for accounting products, etc.). The following of standard operating procedures (along with programming standards) to ease maintenance of code / systems.

Such as (in addition to those already mentioned):
- Good specifications
- Rules of thumb (e.g. 'cut the spec, don't extend the timeline', "deliver early, don't extend the spec", plus all of John Koziol's!!)
- Good specifications
- defensive programming
- Good specifications
- Good project management procedures.
- COMPREHENSIVE AND REPEATABLE TESTING
- protoyping

Did I mention Good Specifications?