The Rise of a Best Practice

You would be hard pressed to find someone that has never heard the term best practice before. Despite most people being aware of the term, it is rather surprising how just about everyone you ask will give you a slightly different definition of what a best practice actually is. Is it quite simply the most efficient way to do something? Is a best practice the fastest way to do something? Or is it just the most logical way to do something? This question was posed to our class earlier today, asking us to define what makes for a best practice. Many students responded, and the terms efficient and fast were thrown around quite a bit. However, as we found out, there is more to a best practice than just that.

Official Definition of a Best Practice

After the class had given it their best shot to thoroughly explain what a best practice is, we were provided with two different definitions from Wikipedia. The first definition is rather verbose, and was posted in 2009:

The most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people … the idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications.

This definition was then shortened in 2012 into a single sentence that reads a lot easier:

A method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark.

To flesh out the term, we were also given the official definition from the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) Edition 2:

Optimal methods, currently recognized within a given industry or discipline, to achieve a stated goal or objective.

My Definition of a Best Practice

Of those three definitions, I personally tend to gravitate towards Wikipedia's 2012 definition. It is closest to the definition I wrote down earlier in the class (prior to seeing the "official" definitions). This is the definition I crafted:

An evolving way of doing things that has proven to have the fewest drawbacks compared to other methods of accomplishing the same task.

A key term that appealed to me about my definition is the idea that a best practice evolves, meaning that we often start with one approach towards accomplishing a task, and then we (the human species) fine-tune the approach into working better for our needs.

Once I understood this, I realized that I have been seeking best practices all along in nearly every facet of my life. In my career as a DJ, I am constantly seeking the best way to get the crowd involved. How many slow songs should I play in an hour? Should I play more 70s' style music for a crowd of this type, or more 80s'? How often should I speak on the microphone, and what is the best way to communicate clearly to an audience? These were questions I thought I had solid answers to within my first year of being a DJ, but as time progressed, I have fine-tuned each answer based on the experience I've gained at each show. My method of DJing has evolved, and the best practices I learned and have used since the beginning have evolved with it.

With that said, it makes a lot of sense why we have so many different terms to describe what a best practice is. To some of us, it is a better practice to accomplish a task in the shortest amount of time versus doing it thoroughly and completely. Many times a best practice for a particular task will be different depending on who you ask. How does a general practice move up through the ranks to become a best practice if not everyone in an industry or discipline agrees with it based on their experience with alternate methods? What is the best practice in establishing an agreed upon definition of a... best practice?