Best practices are the “documented processes, actions, or tasks that have been shown to produce superior results; selected by a systematic process; and judged as exemplary, good, or successfully demonstrated” (Garret, 2008).

There are multiple reasons for using a Best Practice approach for management of projects. Some of these are:

1. To hedge against or minimize project risks, and – by using time-tested ways of doing things – reduce the chances of failure; 
2. to avoid re-inventing the wheel, and hence optimize the use of time and resources;
3. to leverage upon a common language, a platform, a foundation that is generally acceptable to a variety of stakeholders from a variety of project contexts;
4. to take advantage of knowledge and language that has previously found to be of value; and 
5. to ‘stand on the shoulders’ of earlier project managers who have honed their methods to achieve project success.

Given the practical utility of the approach, over the years, a large number of best practices have been identified and documented. These have been widely advocated to help in efficient management of projects of varying size and complexities. However in spite of this, there have been voices of dissent over the use of ‘best practices, suggesting that they have their limitations. 

So, is the Best Practice approach to management of projects a thing of the past? We endeavor to answer the question by looking at it from two perspectives: (a) from those who think the answer is Yes, and (b) from those who would say No. We finally comment on these opposing views.

• For those who say “Yes, best practice approach to project management is a thing of the past” 

They might say that the advantages of a ‘tailored’ approach are

1. It encourages free flow of thinking and creativity at both organizational project management and individual levels;
2. It promotes grass-roots development of new ideas and tailored efforts to the management of projects;
3. It makes success of projects not so dependent on how many people are certified in a codified set of knowledge;
4. It allows practices with outdated or un-beneficial practices to give way to more useful practices;
5. It supports the evolution of industry-cluster, country or region specific practices, rather than globally accepted practices;
6. It allows development and use of ‘Working practices’ in place of ‘Best Practices’;
7. Project management practices will become more environment specific and their level of acceptability will (hopefully) improve; and
8. Organisations codifying knowledge and project management practices will be more dynamic in their efforts to capture knowledge on working practices; this body of knowledge will not become stagnant and evolve.

On the other hand, opponents could say that the disadvantages of such ideas are:

1. It would lead to an accumulation of uncodified knowledge and resultant unstandardized project management practices making it harder for project managers to learn as they go;
2. There would be a lack of cross-fertilization of knowledge across industries and business segments;
3. This could lead to a lack of synergistic knowledge development which could hamper project success in cross-industry and cross- business segment projects;
4. Good ideas might remain within organizational boundaries and would not surface for wider-scale use; and 
5. Without some degree of global standards, people looking for career growth in project management would face problems in getting their competence accepted or their status certified, due to a wide variety of practices.

• For those who say “No, best practice approach to project management is not a thing of the past” 

They would say that its advantages are:

1. Continued development of knowledge about good project management practices can and does still happen;
2. It improves the chances of successful project delivery, especially in projects that cross industry boundaries;
3. It better facilitates knowledge transfer between industries and different environments;
4. People are already building new knowledge inventories for specific project domains such as IT, Defence, Constructions, Business management, Consultancies and so on;
5. Where standards are seen as necessary or advantageous, following best practices can facilitate their development; 
6. User of best practices helps maintain existing certifications and setting up new ones, thus allowing development of new career paths and supporting growth through existing career paths.

The ‘thing of the past’ supporters might counter these arguments with:

1. The project management profession will be limited by over-rigid standards, frameworks and practices,
2. Even where best practices are considered as a standard, people may not always be following them; this can cause misperception about their usefulness;
3. Some people in the profession may be tempted to consume energy and effort in identifying and codifying best practices which have little utility in terms of benefit and practicality in actual use;
4. The available ‘best practices’ may not reflect the needs and expectations of project managers in a specific situation, which may lead to a mismatch; and
5. Whether project management professionals love them or hate them, most don’t have a choice – best practices may be ‘imposed’.

One view of how we should look forward is to move from an obsession with best practices to a more flexible model of codifying and acknowledging working practices prevalent across organizational clusters, industries, regions and countries. 

We cannot just ‘invent tomorrow’ from scratch. The best ways that things were done in the past may not be right for the future, but it would be limiting to say that they should be ignored. The need for informed thinking to balance the needs of the future with the experience of the past seems unavoidable.

References:

Garrett, D. (2008), “Best Practice”, Project Management.com, available at: http://www.projectmanagement.com/wikis/240314/Best-Practice

Note: This article was previously published by projectmanagement.com

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