A best practice is commonly defined as a technique or methodology that, through experience and research, has proven reliably to lead to a desired result. This usually provides knowledge about what works in specific situations and contexts. “Best Practice” is not about perfection, results can be partial and may be related to only one or more components of the practice being considered therefore, documenting and applying lessons learned on what does not work and why it does not work is an integral part of best practice. This allows other project implementers to avoid making similar mistakes. This document provides guidance on the process for documenting knowledge on experiences that can contribute to the improvement of project implementation strategies.
Procedure for identifying best practices.
Identifying best practices involves judgement. Such judgements require prior analysis using the following set of criteria: effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, ethical soundness, sustainability, possibility of duplication, partnership, community involvement, and political commitment. A best practice does not always have to meet all the criteria outlined below but must always respond to the proposed practices’ effectiveness, efficiency, and relevance with an addition of one or more of the other criteria.
- Effectiveness: This is a fundamental criterion implicit in the definition. The proposed practice must work and achieve results that are measurable.
- Efficiency: The proposed practice must produce results with a reasonable level of resources and time.
- Relevance: The proposed practice must address the priority problems which resulted in the implementation of the intervention.
- Ethical soundness: The proposed practice must respect the current rules of ethics for dealing with human populations.
- Sustainability: The proposed practice must be implementable over a long period of time without any massive injection of additional resources.
- Possibility of duplication: The proposed practice, as carried out, must be replicable elsewhere in the Region.
- Involvement of partnerships: The proposed practice must involve satisfactory collaboration between several stakeholders.
- Community involvement: The proposed practice must involve participation of the affected communities.
- Political commitment: The proposed practice must have support from the relevant national or local authorities.
Documenting “Best Practices
To ensure readability and a clear presentation of what makes a practice innovative, interesting, informative and, indeed, a “Best Practice”, the following format should be used for documentation purposes:
Title of the best practice: This should be concise and reflect the practice being documented.
Introduction: This should provide the context and justification for the practice and address the following issues:
- What is the problem being addressed?
- Which population is being affected?
- How is the problem impacting the population?
- What were the objectives being achieved?
Implementation of the Practice:
- What are the main activities carried out?
- When and where were the activities carried out?
- Who were the key implementers and collaborators?
- What were the resource implications?
- What are key strategies applied to carry out implementation?
Results of the Practice – Outputs and Outcomes:
- What were the concrete results achieved in terms of outputs and outcomes?
- Was an assessment of the practice carried out? If yes, what were the results?
Lessons Learnt:
- What worked well?
- What facilitated this?
- What did not work?
- Why did it not work?
Conclusion:
- How have the results benefited the population?
- Why may that intervention be considered a “Best Practice”?
- Recommendations for those intending to adopt the documented “Best Practice” or how it can help people working on the same issue(s).
Further Reading:
- Provide a list of references (not more than six) that give additional information on the “Best Practice” for those who may be interested in how the results have benefited the population.
