Applying a Template for Best Practice Documentation

Knowledge Management has become a key instrument for creating, identifying and sharing knowledge assets in organizations. Best Practice (BP) is a useful means for organizations to improve knowledge sharing. However, low quality of BP documentations can hinder a successful implementation of BPs, since practitioners may not be able to correctly and efficiently use them, or even trust them. In this paper, a BP Document Template (BPDT) for high quality documentation is presented. The final BPDT is a result of the combination of two templates, the first one created based on interviews with knowledge management experts and the second one based on a literature review using grounded theory. The final BPDT has been applied in three real-life organizations for demonstrating its benefits, drawbacks, completeness, ease of use, and whether it also supports both the design of BPs and the evaluation of already designed BPs. The demonstration showed promising results but also some drawbacks. The identified drawbacks can be used as input for future research.