Good practice and best practice

ITIL V3 did a little word dance around what "good practice" and "best practice" mean which had more to do with political semantics and digging themselves out of a hole than it did about what the terms really mean. It ought to be straightforward:

What do people usually consider to be the proper way to do this? Is there a "usual" way, i.e. a generally accepted way? Is there an understanding of "proper"? if we can answer these affirmatively, then we have Good Practice.

Sometimes it is clear that there is one generally accepted good practice.

If the industry is riven by debate then either (a) we have competing good practices or (b) we don't have enough communal experience to know yet.

If a body of knowledge - such as ITIL - claims to document good practice then it should clearly state when it is situation (a). It should document all the good options and the debate, or it should form a community-accepted committee to choose one. In either approach it should make clear that there are dissenting views.

And if it is situation (b) then there is no good practice, just ideas and opinions. Either the body of knowledge should take no position, or it should clearly delineate unproven theory from good practice. ITIL fails this test: it is "not colour-coded". Look at portfolio, CMDB/CMS, SKMS, or catalogue as examples.

"Best practice" is not unproven theory and opinion either. Best practice is what you get when you do good practice to the highest standard possible: it is the end-game goal to shoot for if your objective is to have the highest quality possible. It is "10 on the dial" when you are benchmarking yourself. (Or 11 if you are a Spinal Tap fan).

"Best practice" does NOT mean state-of-the-art: there is no way to know yet whether unproven practice is "best" or a blind alley or an awful destructive idea. If it IS proven, then it forms part of good practice, and we return to the paragraph above. "Best" is best.

ITIL tried to de-brand itself as "best practice" but it keeps creeping back, even in the "official" books, including the Official Introduction.

Both of these terms, "good practice" and "best practice", have been subject to terminological debasement. It would be a fine thing if we could get back to the obvious common sense interpretation, but in this post-modernist world it's unlikely. best we be clear that they don't mean anything any more, certainly not as ITIL (ab)uses them.

[Update, moving this up from comments:]
I blogged long long ago about how dangerous the word "best" is, however you frame it. "Best" leads with the chin.

See also my blog about how ITIL V3 clearly can't be "best".

I prefer Generally Accepted Service Practice, GASP, directly analogous to GAAP. Maybe ITIL is the last GASP.

Note that the Foundation exams define the terms but the V3 books don't (consistently), as far as I can tell. According to the exam questions (and ONLY the exam questions)

Apparently the distinction is that

Best Practices are proven activities or processes that have been successfully used by multiple organisations but has not yet become common industry practice
Good Practices are practices that are in wide industry use, they are Best Practices that have been commonly applied

Comments

Good to Best to Good to ....

In a recent training that I attended... my trainer said..

Good Practices are the ones which were best practices once... and because of increase in adoption because good practices...
Best Practices are the ones which used to be good practices... and because of trying to reach higher level of adoption, and lower rate of adoption.. because best practices...

Does it even matter? I have seen these terms being used when audits are being done, sales pitches being made, claims being done...

When you start working on the ground... what matters is what could be institutionalized...

There's a legal difference. It's not simply a word shuffle

"Good" is subjective to what the individual using the word says is good. It means something different to different people and coveys the message intentionally that what is being done is good, and not intended to be wrong or necessarily bad. It may not be best either. One can view it as an attempt by the individual or organisation to convey that they intend to do good with what advice he or she is giving or doing or promoting, but it's up to the recipient to adopt or adapt it to their own use.

"Best" is seen in some circles as a benchmarkable statement of sorts and potentially could be viewed as objective and measuable. And importantly Best Practice can certainly be measured against someone else's laid down or previously accepted best practice - This is dangerous ground with significant legal consequences. So don't say what you are doing is Best Practice - it might not be!

By way of example, If say ITIL, Configuation Management as a process is called Best Practice, there will be someone who may will have bettered it and be measured to have bettered it. Because of this, there will be two outcomes. Firstly the ITIL Configuation Management guidance/standard/process will become redundant or even worse, the organisation who has measurably bettered the thing, will potentially claim against the organisation (in this case OGC) for mis-representation of ITIL as "Best" practice. (that's a thought!).

UK Gov got caught out many moons ago by saying that something they did was Best Practice (I seem to recall it was in the Construction sector). They were wrong at that time and provend to be wrong as there were better practices being delivered by others. EU Law is pretty hot on this and the UK taxpayer was not at all happy.

And remember ITIL and all things related to ITIL is the property of UK Gov whether or not we like it. You have to work on the basis that UK Gov's Legal advisers are either very clever or complete nutcases for coming up with this shift in emphasis. Trust me though, they are very,very clever!

Would ather just ignore the issue, but...

This is truly lame and I'm starting to agree on the Legal CONspiracy front, but even that seems like overkill for how easy it would be to just simply make some definitive statements and then let everyone else either like it or not. With a bit of discussion based research, I've just wasted 2 hours of my time - yuck. The simplest explanation or comparison of the two that I can deduce (and will stick to) is that ITIL is a best practice framework. It is not the best practice, but the goal of the framework is to foster best practices in ITSM for each organization that uses the set of practices in ITIL. Because not all the practices are best for all organizations, ITIL must be referred to as a set of Good Practices in ITSM.

So, my one liner for this (until shown the light otherwise) will be that "ITIL is a set of ITSM Good Practices that provides guidance and assists organizations in the implementation of IT Service Management Best Practices".

Generally Accepted Service Practice

I blogged long long ago about how dangerous the word "best" is, however you frame it. "Best" leads with the chin.

See also my blog about how ITIL V3 clearly can't be "best".

I prefer Generally Accepted Service Practice, GASP, directly analogous to GAAP. Maybe ITIL is the last GASP.

Note that the Foundation exams define the terms but the V3 books don't (consistently), as far as I can tell. According to the exam questions (and ONLY the exam questions)

Apparently the distinction is that

Best Practices are proven activities or processes that have been successfully used by multiple organisations but has not yet become common industry practice
Good Practices are practices that are in wide industry use, they are Best Practices that have been commonly applied

Questions regarding

Questions regarding good/best practices are no longer in foundation exams.

amateur educators

...but they were there. The sooner APMG stops using amateur educators to write the exams the better. The fact that questions totally unsupported by the syllabus material (the ITIL books) ever got past the supposedly rigorous review process shows the deficiencies.

The certification is sold as supporting the trainee's status as an "ITIL Expert" - why doesn't APMG use properly-qualified adult education experts and multi-choice examination experts to write, assure, monitor and improve the exams?

The Practice Lifecyce

Hi Skep

Did you check the 'Practice Lifecycle' discussion I offer in the Guide to USMBOK? The 4 stage lifecycle tries to connect good to best to common to next in the spirit of continuous improvement, and to position for the best practice statement (bps) I use within the USMBOK to describe what you coined as 'GASP's (!). Its quite strange that after all these years of claiming something is 'best practice' that the industry, and I include itSMF here, has failed to establish a basic definition. I just don't see why folks left it to ITIL... You would think the industry would wnat to have a least one hand on the steering wheel, punting this definition and others, is like throwing your Ferrari car keys to your 15yo

For me ITIL is good

For me ITIL is good practice.

Best practice is when you adapt it to your environment. Each organization should have its own best practices, based and inspired on good practices. Like ITIL.

undefined

Since "good' and "best" are undefined, I guess you are free to interpret them as you see fit. I'm trying to nail the common sense definition but I guess yours is as good. It might even be best.

Syndicate content