What exactly is a "Best Practice" anyway?

It is my honor to speak at the upcoming SharePoint Best Practices conference in Washington D. C. this September www.sharepointbestpractices.com

But what exactly is a best practice anyway?

Generally speaking best practices are 'tried and true' solutions to problems commonly faced in an industry or profession.  The goal of a "best practice" is to find the right sollution, not necessarily the fastest or most thorough solution.  As an example, a Ferrari is a much better car than my poor tired old Ford Taurus.  On the other hand my Taurus is cheap, gets me where I need to go, and fits in my garage.  I can park my Taurus without worrying a lot about having it stolen, and it doesn't draw a lot of unwanted attention from speed traps.  So, a Ferrari is a better car but the Ford Taurus is the best practice for my current lifestyle.

So, a best practice balances resources, risks, scheduling, and performance to find the right solution to a problem.  Project management is essentially the disciplline of arriving at best practice solutions to one-time problems, in a repeatable and intelligent fashion.

So, the decision-making "Magic Triangle" I created for my project management classes is really a diagram showing how to arrive at a best practice for a given problem.  Best practices are ALWAYS compromise solutions that balance cost, risk and performance.  Best practices are balanced solutions to common problems.