For all that we know that being judgemental is not a positive trait, the truth is that as IT Pros we spend much of our day (if not our career) judging much of our environment.

We automatically assess and judge issues that we face. We judge the solutions we come up with - whether they are temporary fixes or full blown designs. We judge our skills relative to our environment, to the workplace, and to our colleagues to ensure we're keeping up.

So I deeply appreciated it when Rabbi Davidovich recently wrote

"There's way too much "Judge not..." going on.  That's the brain's version of the lungs' "Don't breathe"."

He was speaking to the population at large, but I think this has special relevance to us in IT.

Moreso, once we accept that judging is something that we naturally do, a condition heightened by our career choice, which is in many contexts something we SHOULD do - why then we can stop trying to avoid it or deny we do it and put some structure around it.

Because many of us sense intuitively that becoming judgemental is NOT a good thing. So how do we avoid crossing the line?

Like all good concepts in IT, we implement a framework.

• Judge designs, but not until we you have collected all the data possible.
• Judge based on AVAILABLE data, knowing that Hick's law will bite you if let it
• Judge situations around you, but always with Occam's Razor in mind.
• Judge execution based on the Pareto Principal

But that's dancing around the subject. When we think of "judging", the idea that most often comes to mind (IT Pro or not) is judging others.

In those cases, there are also guidelines, which were outlined in Rabbi Davidovich's original post: 

• "Suspend Judgment until you get more facts."
• "Judge slowly"
• "When uncertain, judge favorably."
• "Unless it's relevant to others, keep your judgments to yourself."

As with any habit, technology, or issue that has both positive applications and challenging aspects, the application of a useful framework allows us to judge our options and act correctly.