An empirical approach to best practice identification and selection: the US Department of Defense acquisition best practices clearinghouse

Recommendations concerning best practices are ubiquitous in academic literature as well as audit reports and institutional policy. However, information on the effectiveness of recommended practices, or the context within which that effectiveness has been observed, is not readily available. In the rare occasions this information is available, it is not packaged in such a way as to support practitioners. Most organizations and projects do not possess sufficient resources to implement even a fraction of the practices espoused, so often choose to adopt none. There are also few if any tools to support practice selection. This paper describes an approach to identify, analyze, synthesize, and package empirical information about practice effectiveness, and evaluates the knowledge gained from the development of a prototype tool designed to implement that approach.