My way is right

... for me.

All to often in our industry we forget that there is more than one way to accomplish the same thing.  I spent a good half-hour, and I mean good as in well-spent with someone who is on the other side of an issue from where I approach things.  I started off our conversation with something like the following statement:

Both of us know that we have been successful in doing things in our preferred way.  We also know that we have a lot of experience doing that.  It's not that my way is right, or your way is right.  Both can lead to success.  In the last thirty years the question we are debating has yet to be decided in IT, nor in the last twenty years elsewhere, nor in the last ten in our industry.  I'm not going to move you from your preferences and you are not going to move me.  We are not going to solve in the next hour what our industry has not been able to decide in the last 3 decades.  Let us not argue about which way is better, but rather work on how to best resolve this issue so that we can move forward.

We did manage it, and we avoided an hour and a half of chest thumping that would have gotten neither of us anywhere.

--   Keith