Best Practise

A Best Practice is a technique or series of techniques that provide a means of achieving better results.

In the words taken from http://www.best-management-practice.com/ which is managed by the TSO and APMG in conjunction with the Cabinet Office, UK,

“They present flexible, practical and effective guidance, drawn from a range of the most successful global business experiences.”

Since a best practice helps produce a better result than other employed means, it often becomes a benchmark. However Best Practises are constantly evolving due to their very nature. As and when improvements are noticed they are incorporated into the best practise so that you may have various versions of a best practise.  A Best Practise can in a way be stated as a standard way of carrying out an activity or a series of activities.

Quite often a Best Practise is an alternate to a recognized standard and is used to help maintain or set a quality standard. Best practises often have associated standards. A classic example is the case of the ISO 20000 standard for IT Service Management. The associated Best Practise for IT Service Management is ITIL. The difference between the two is that a “Standard” is a must to adhere, while a Best Practise is a “Good To Adhere”. Many industries have best practises unique to them. For example the IT Industry has ITIL and CoBIT. Project Management has Prince2 and PRISM amongst others.