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A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to other known alternatives because it often produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things, e.g., a standard way of complying with legal or ethical requirements. Best practices are used to maintain quality as an alternative to mandatory legislated standards and can be based on self-assessment or
benchmarking Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. Benchmarking is used to measure performanc ...
. Best practice is a feature of accredited management standards such as
ISO 9000 The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 90 ...
and
ISO 14001 ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (b) ...
. 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 In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessme ...
term. More specific uses of the term include good agricultural practices,
good manufacturing practice Current good manufacturing practices (cGMP) are those conforming to the guidelines recommended by relevant agencies. Those agencies control the authorization and licensing of the manufacture and sale of food and beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceut ...
,
good laboratory practice In the experimental (non-clinical) research arena, good laboratory practice or GLP is a quality system of management controls for research laboratories and organizations to ensure the uniformity, consistency, reliability, reproducibility, quality ...
,
good clinical practice Good clinical practice (GCP) is an international quality standard, which governments can then transpose into regulations for clinical trials involving human subjects. GCP follows the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements ...
, and good
distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics * Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...
practice.


In public policy

Best practice is a form of
program evaluation Program evaluation is a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies and programs, particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency. In both the public and private sectors, s ...
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 Eugene Bardach is an American political scientist. He is an emeritus professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for developing the eightfold path framework of policy analysis that is c ...
provides the following theoretical framework (
eightfold path The Noble Eightfold Path (Pali: ; Sanskrit: ) is an early summary of the path of Buddhist practices leading to liberation from samsara, the painful cycle of rebirth, in the form of nirvana. The Eightfold Path consists of eight practices: ...
for best practices) in his book ''
A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis ''A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving'' is a nonfiction book of policy analysis assembled by Eugene Bardach, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California ...
'', in 2011: # Define the problem # Assemble the evidence # Construct the alternatives # Select the criteria # Project the outcomes # Confront the trade-offs # Decide # 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.


Methodology according to Bretschneider et al.

Bretschneider et al. offers an alternate methodology for Best Practices research in 2005. Bretschneider's approach is much more technical than Bardach's, and explores issues of completeness and comparability. He addresses the fact that fully establishing whether a practice is truly a best practice would require assessment in all contexts, while in practice, only example cases are analyzed. Bretschneider also stresses the fact that in order for something to be considered a "best practice" it must be arrived at through a comparative process between methodologies. In order for a "best practice" to be valid, it must take into account all relevant approaches, since neglecting to do so would lead to inappropriate usage of the term "best." Comparing sample practices may yield a good practice, but may also be altogether unreliable, depending on how the sample was selected.


Examples

There are many examples of the use of best/smart practice evaluations in Public Policy. The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon pro ...
(EPA) produces a document called
The Clean Energy-Environment Guide to Action ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
, designed to share practices found to be successful and best by states, to determine what is most suitable for them to use in generating clean energy policies and programs. The guide includes 16 clean energy policies and programs that offer opportunities for states to save energy, improve air quality, lower
greenhouse gas emission Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and ...
and increase economic development. An example of a successful best practice from the guide is building codes for energy efficiency. This practice is to use building energy codes to set requirements that establish a minimum level of energy efficiency standards for residential and commercial buildings. California Energy Code Title 24 is one "best practice" that is highlighted in this guide. The following points for energy code implementation is to educate and train key audiences, supply the right resources, and to provide budget and staff for the program. Eugene Bardach has a list of smart practice candidates in his book ''A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis'', Eightfold Path (policy analysis). One example is the tutoring program for children in grades 1-3 called Reading One-to-One. The program from Texas includes one on one tutoring with supervision and simple structured instruction in
phonemic awareness Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness in which listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest mental units of sound that help to differentiate units of meaning ( morphemes). Separating the spoken w ...
. Phonemic awareness is one highly regarded predictor of how well a child will learn to read in the first two years of school. The program takes advantage of the fact that many children, especially
ESL English as a second or foreign language is the use of English by speakers with different native languages. Language education for people learning English may be known as English as a second language (ESL), English as a foreign language (EFL ...
students, fail in reading because it is very hard for second language students to understand and pronounce sounds in English. The program is easily duplicated at a relatively low cost because of the straight forward teaching materials, systematic methods and administrative oversight. In September 2013 at the New York State Conference for Mayors and Municipal Officials, successes, ideas and information on best practices were shared among government peers. A best practice that was highlighted at the conference was how
Salinas, California Salinas (; Spanish for "Salt Marsh or Salt Flats") is a city in California and the county seat of Monterey County. With a population of 163,542 in the 2020 Census, Salinas is the most populous city in Monterey County. Salinas is an urban area l ...
is rebuilding their economy by engaging technology companies with their agricultural business in order to grow jobs. Salinas is taking advantage of an idle opportunity. The area already has abundant lettuce fields and now the city is marketing itself as a lab for agricultural technology. This public/private partnership includes a new nonprofit called the Steinbeck Innovation Foundation to increase investment in new technologies to help the area's agricultural industry.


Use in health and human services

In recent years, public agencies and
non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in ...
s 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 practice Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the idea that occupational practices ought to be based on scientific evidence. While seemingly obviously desirable, the proposal has been controversial, with some arguing that results may not specialize to indiv ...
s 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.”


In action


Clean air financing programs

Financing Clean Air Programs, and example taken from NGA This is a quick guide put together by the NGA Center for Best Practices. It explores what clean air programs currently exist and how they are being financed. Rather than stating one best practice to tackling clean air, this report creates a table of the different programs, how they are being financed, and in what state. Governors and their staffs can then look for characteristics and solutions that are most realistic and applicable to their situation. The key is to tailor current practices that are in the world to the specific situation you are looking to solve. Best practices are meant to give insight into existing strategies.


Environmental management

The concept of best practice has been employed extensively in environmental management. For example, it has been employed in
aquaculture Aquaculture (less commonly spelled aquiculture), also known as aquafarming, is the controlled cultivation ("farming") of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, mollusks, algae and other organisms of value such as aquatic plants (e.g. lot ...
such as recommending low-phosphorus feed ingredients, in forestry to manage
riparian buffer zones A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks ar ...
, in livestock and pasture management to regulate stocking rates, and in particular, best management practices have been important to improving
water quality Water quality refers to the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of water based on the standards of its usage. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which compliance, generally achieved through tr ...
relating to
nonpoint source pollution Nonpoint source (NPS) pollution refers to diffuse contamination (or pollution) of water or air that does not originate from a single discrete source. This type of pollution is often the cumulative effect of small amounts of contaminants gathered ...
of fertilizers in agriculture as well as the identification and adoption of best practice for controlling salinity. However, in the context of complex environmental problems such as dryland salinity, there are significant challenges in defining what is best in any given context. Best management practice for complex problems is context specific and often contested against a background of imperfect knowledge. In these contexts, it is more useful to think of best management practice as an adaptive learning process rather than a fixed set of rules or guidelines. This approach to best practice focuses on fostering improvements in quality and promoting continuous learning.


Higher education

STEM Program explanation is taken from Angela Baber's report to the NGA. The NGA has identified science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as important skills that need to be developed in community colleges in order to create a strong workforce. Many states are creating or have created STEM Programs to address this issue. In order for these programs to work governors should: * "Engage business to help ensure that community colleges meet regional STEM-skill needs * Use community colleges to support new models of STEM education * Reward community colleges and students for STEM course-completion * Ensure that community colleges support more effective mathematics remediation * Require that community college STEM credits and credentials are transferable."


Health and human services

The
U.S. Preventive Services Task Force The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is "an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that systematically reviews the evidence of effectiveness and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services". ...
(USPSTF) makes evidence-based recommendations on clinical preventive services. The Task Force recommendations are based on systematic reviews and assessment of the available medical evidence. The San Francisco Public Health Department conducted The Transgender Best Practices Guide project, a best practices document for cultural and service competency in working with
transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...
clients within HIV/AIDS service- provision settings. Following an intensive literature search and consumer focus group, a Working Group composed of noted community leaders; activists, professionals, and transgender consumers participated in the development of the Best Practices guide. Topics covered by the Best Practices guide include mental health issues; gender identity; hormone use and clinical care practices. The Best Practices guide is currently in production; it will be published and distributed to EMA providers, as well as to select organizations nationwide. In addition, four large-scale EMA provider training will be provided to educate providers on the Best Practices recommendations and standard measures. This is the first national federally funded effort to develop a Best Practices guide for providers who serve the HIV positive transgender community.


Charity/nonprofit sector

The nonprofit/voluntary sector is generally lacking tools for sharing and accessing best practices. Steps are being taken in some parts of the world, for example in the European Union, where the Europe 2020 Strategy has as a top priority the exchange of good practices and networking (including the nonprofit sector). An initiative of sharing good practices in terms of human resources (HR) and leadership among European nonprofit organizations was financed by the EU and launched in 2013, called HR Twinning. The platform allows the public to search for good practices and its members the possibility to share their practices, engage in discussions in the forum section and enroll their organization. Membership is free. The project is currently limited to a European audience.


Other domains

Nearly every industry and professional discipline discusses best practices. Areas of note include
information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology syste ...
development (such as new software,) construction, transportation, business management, sustainable development and various aspects of
project management Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. T ...
. Best practices also occur in healthcare to deliver high-quality care that promotes best outcomes. Best practices are used within
business area A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...
s including
sales Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in r ...
,
manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...
,
teaching Teaching is the practice implemented by a ''teacher'' aimed at transmitting skills (knowledge, know-how, and interpersonal skills) to a learner, a student, or any other audience in the context of an educational institution. Teaching is closely ...
,
computer programming Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...
,
road construction A road is a linear way for the conveyance of traffic that mostly has an improved surface for use by vehicles (motorized and non-motorized) and pedestrians. Unlike streets, the main function of roads is transportation. There are many types of ...
,
health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health pr ...
,
insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...
,
telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...
and
public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public ...
.


Critique

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.Bardach, Eugene (2011). ''A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving''. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. .
Michael Quinn Patton Michael Quinn Patton (born 1945) is an independent organizational development and program evaluation consultant, and former president of the American Evaluation Association. He is the founder and director of Utilization-Focused Evaluation. After ...
jokes in his book about qualitative research and evaluation methods "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.
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''. Eric Darling states it's 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.
Scott Ambler Scott W. Ambler (born 1966) is a Canadian software engineer, consultant and author. He is an author of books about the Disciplined Agile Delivery toolkit, the Unified process, Agile software development, the Unified Modeling Language, and Capabi ...
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. Similarly, Cem Kaner and
James Bach James Marcus Bach is an American software tester, author, trainer, and consultant. Career In his autobiography, Bach wrote that he worked as a software testing manager for Apple and Borland after dropping out of high school. He also programmed ...
provide two scenarios to illustrate the contextual nature of "best practice" in their article. In essence, such critiques are consistent with the
contingency theory A contingency theory is an organizational theory that claims that there is no best way to organize a corporation, to lead a company, or to make decisions. Instead, the optimal course of action is contingent (dependent) upon the internal and ext ...
, which was developed during the 1950s and 1960s.


See also

*
Anti-pattern An anti-pattern in software engineering, project management, and business processes is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by computer programmer An ...
– a commonly followed standard or practice which is in fact far from the best solution *
Benchmarking Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. Benchmarking is used to measure performan ...
*
Best available technology The best available technology or best available techniques (BAT) is the technology approved by legislators or regulators for meeting output standards for a particular process, such as pollution abatement. Similar terms are ''best practicable means ...
*
Best coding practices Coding best practices or programming best practices are a set of informal rules (''best practices'') that many software developers in computer programming follow to improve software quality. Many computer programs remain in use for long periods ...
*
Best current practice A Best Current Practice (BCP) is a ''de facto'' level of performance in engineering and information technology. It is more flexible than a standard, since techniques and tools are continually evolving. The Internet Engineering Task Force publish ...
in engineering and information technology *
Best management practice for water pollution Best management practices (BMPs) is a term used in the United States and Canada to describe a type of water pollution control. Historically the term has referred to auxiliary pollution controls in the fields of industrial wastewater control and ...
*
Best of all possible worlds The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" (french: Le meilleur des mondes possibles; german: Die beste aller möglichen Welten) was coined by the German polymath and Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work ''Essais de Th ...
*
Business rule A business rule defines or constrains some aspect of business. It may be expressed to specify an action to be taken when certain conditions are true or may be phrased so it can only resolve to either true or false. Business rules are intended to ass ...
*
Evidence-based practice Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the idea that occupational practices ought to be based on scientific evidence. While seemingly obviously desirable, the proposal has been controversial, with some arguing that results may not specialize to indiv ...
*
Gold standard (test) In medicine and statistics, a gold standard test is usually the diagnostic test or benchmark that is the best available under reasonable conditions. In other words, a gold standard is the most accurate test possible without restrictions. Both me ...
*
Good clinical data management practice Good clinical data management practice (GCDMP) is the current industry standards for clinical data management that consist of best business practice and acceptable regulatory standards. In all phases of clinical trials, clinical and laboratory in ...
*
GxP GxP is a general abbreviation for the "good practice" quality guidelines and regulations. The "x" stands for the various fields, including the pharmaceutical and food industries, for example good agricultural practice, or GAP. A "c" or "C" is ...
* '' Standard of Good Practice'' * *
Strategic management In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of Resource management, resour ...


References


External links


IETF Best Current Practice RFCs List
– Internet Engineering Task Force * The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices
"NGA Center for Best Practice"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Best Practice Quality management Software development philosophies Good practice