Digital Identity

Filling the Gaps with Best Practices

Once you have used the maturity model to assess your current state in any given area and selected a goal, the gap between these two is filled with what we can term "best practices ." The term best practice gets thrown around a lot. For our purposes, we use the term to define activities that have four characteristics:

Best practices build on the experience of others.

Best practices are usually evolutions of practices already being performed in your organization or in another. You can find out what others are doing by reading, going to conferences, networking in local and national industry associations, and hiring consultants.

Best practices are documented.

Your organization must have a methodology for documenting what it does in a way that others can follow. People should be trained in how practices are documented.

Best practices are repeatable.

Once practices have been documented, other groups can duplicate them. If the documentation is not sufficient to allow the practice to be repeated, then the documentation should be improved.

Best practices are measured.

Like any good recipe, practices that are repeated in the same way should give the same results. The only way to tell if you're getting the same results is to have some way to measure the outcome of the practice. Metrics can be used to evaluate a practice, determine why the results are not adequate, and then change the practice.

As I stated earlier, there are many things you will change in your ...