Best practice

A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to alternatives because it tends to produce superior results. Best practices are used to achieve quality as an alternative to mandatory standards. Best practices can be based on self-assessment or benchmarking.^[1] Best practice is a feature of accredited management standards such as ISO 9000 and ISO 14001.^[2]

Some consulting firms specialize in the area of best practice and offer ready-made templates to standardize business process documentation. Sometimes a best practice is not applicable or is inappropriate for a particular organization's needs. A key strategic talent required when applying best practice to organizations is the ability to balance the unique qualities of an organization with the practices that it has in common with others. Good operating practice is a strategic management term. More specific uses of the term include good agricultural practices, good manufacturing practice, good laboratory practice, good clinical practice, and good distribution practice.

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Best practice is a form of program evaluation in public policy. It is the process of reviewing policy alternatives that have been effective in addressing similar issues in the past and could be applied to a current problem. Determining best practices to address a particular policy problem is a commonly used but little understood tool of analysis because the concept is vague and should therefore be examined with caution. Vagueness stems from the term "best" which is subjective. While some research and evidence must go into determining a practice the "best" it is more helpful to simply determine if a practice has worked exceptionally well and why. Instead of it being "the best", a practice might simply be a smart practice, a good practice, or a promising practice. This allows for a mix and match approach for making recommendations that might encompass pieces of many good practices. Eugene Bardach provides the following theoretical framework (eightfold path for best practices) in his book A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis, in 2011:

1. Define the problem
2. Assemble the evidence
3. Construct the alternatives
4. Select the criteria
5. Project the outcomes
6. Confront the trade-offs
7. Decide
8. Tell your story

Excessive optimism about the expected impact of untested smart practices is a common critique. If a current practice is known to be ineffective, implementing a promising alternative after weighing the alternatives may be worth the risk.^[3]

In recent years, public agencies and non-governmental organizations have been exploring and adopting best practices when delivering health and human services. In these settings, the use of the terms "promising practices", "best practices", and "evidence-based practices" is common and often confusing as there is not a general consensus on what constitutes promising practices or best practices. In this context, the use of the terms "best practices" and "evidence-based practices" are often used interchangeably. Evidence-based practices are methods or techniques that have documented outcomes and ability to replicate as key factors. Despite these challenges, the literature suggests that there is some common use of and criteria for identifying best practices. For example, a general working definition used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in referring to a promising practice is defined as one with at least preliminary evidence of effectiveness in small-scale interventions or for which there is potential for generating data that will be useful for making decisions about taking the intervention to scale and generalizing the results to diverse populations and settings.^[9]

Since evidence of effectiveness, the potential for taking the intervention to scale and generalizing the results to other populations and settings are key factors for best practices, the manner in which a method or intervention becomes a best practice can take some time and effort. The table below demonstrates the process for a promising practice to achieve the status of research-validated best practice.^[10]

The National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP) is a searchable online registry of interventions supporting substance abuse prevention and mental health treatment that has been reviewed and rated by independent reviewers.^[11] NREPP accepts submissions for interventions that meet minimum requirements to be considered for review. Minimum requirements include (1) demonstration of one or more positive outcomes among individuals, communities, or populations; (2) evidence of these outcomes has been demonstrated in at least one study using an experimental or quasi-experimental design; (3) the results of these studies have been published in a peer-reviewed journal or other professional publication, or documented in a comprehensive evaluation report; and (4) implementation materials, training and support resources, and quality assurance procedures have been developed and are ready for use by the public. NREPP is not an exhaustive list of interventions and inclusion in the registry does not constitute an endorsement.^[12]

There is existing controversy about the lack of culturally appropriate evidence-based best practices and the need to utilize a research-based approach to validate interventions. Some communities have deployed practices over a long period of time that has produced positive outcomes as well as a general community consensus to be successful. The California Reducing Disparities Project (CRDP) is working to identify such practices.^[13] CRDP intends to improve access, quality of care, and increase positive outcomes for racial, ethnic and cultural communities. These communities have been identified as (1) African American, (2) Asian/Pacific Islanders, (3) Latinos, (4) lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, questioning, and (5) Native Americans. Strategic Planning Workgroups composed of mental health providers and community members as well as consumers and family members are given the task of identifying new approaches toward reducing disparities. The five Strategic Planning Workgroups work to identify new service delivery approaches defined by multicultural communities for multicultural communities using community-defined evidence to improve outcomes and reduce disparities. Community- defined evidence is defined as "a set of practices that communities have used and determined to yield positive results as determined by community consensus over time and which may or may not have been measured empirically but have reached a level of acceptance by the community."^[14]

Nearly every industry and professional discipline discusses best practices. Areas of note include information technology development (such as new software,) construction, transportation, business management, sustainable development and various aspects of project management. Best practices also occur in healthcare to deliver high-quality care that promotes best outcomes. Best practices are used within business areas including sales, manufacturing, teaching, computer programming, road construction, health care, insurance, telecommunication and public policy.

There are some criticisms of the term "best practice". Eugene Bardach claims that the work necessary to deem a practice the "best" is rarely done. Most of the time, one will find "good" practices or "smart" practices that offer insight into solutions that may or may not work for a given situation.^[3] Michael Quinn Patton jokes in his book about qualitative research and evaluation methods^[28] "the only best practice in which I have complete confidence is avoiding the label 'best practice'" and elaborates further:

The allure and seduction of best-practice thinking poisons genuine dialogue about both what we know and the limitations of what we know. ... That modeling of and nurturing deliberative, inclusive, and, yes, humble dialogue may make a greater contribution to societal welfare than the search for generalizable, "best-practice" findings – conclusions that risk becoming the latest rigid orthodoxies even as they are becoming outdated anyway.^[28]

Quinn proposes avoiding asking or entertaining the question "Which is best?" and says that more nuanced questions related to conditions and contexts should be asked instead. He further suggests terms which "tend less toward overgeneralization" like better practices, effective practices, or promising practices.^[28] Eric Darling states it is not best practice it's common practice. Specifically relating to the field of projects based work Dr Darling asserts in the past work practices were pragmatic in order to get achieve the task, recent decades has seen rise in opinions with limited evidence of best. Further rather than best practice perhaps we should strive for evidence based practice.^[29] Scott Ambler challenges the assumptions that there can be a recommended practice that is best in all cases. Instead, he offers an alternative view, "contextual practice", in which the notion of what is "best" will vary with the context.^[30] Similarly, Cem Kaner and James Bach provide two scenarios to illustrate the contextual nature of "best practice" in their article.^[31] In essence, such critiques are consistent with the contingency theory, which was developed during the 1950s and 1960s.