I have been thinking of how someone would try to specify a “best practice” for a process they are familiar with. The way I describe a best practice is “standard” way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves in a specific organization (a bit different then the way Wikipedia describes a best practice). For our purposes the specification of the best practice should be unintimidating, something that anyone can use and understand. It doesn’t need to be rigorously defined, since it is meant for humans, not machines. A while back it seemed to me that writing instructions was the closest to what I was looking for, and I started searching for some guidelines for how good instructions should be written. I found some guidelines on how to write instructions which were all very common sense, but for the life of me I can’t remember where I found them (so please excuse the fact there is no link, anyone that recognizes them please let me know).

Below there is an excerpt of what I found (which focuses on the flow – rather than how to write the tasks themselves) which seems to cover the most used BPMN control-flow elements as found by Michael zur Muehlen at a level which a person can understand. This fits very nicely with how we think of human processes at ActionBase – this type of best practice is a recommendation of how the process should be done – not a rigorous model that dictates it. Having such a best practice document enables us to recommend a next step to each participant in the process – without forcing it upon them. Here

Structure and format. Normally, we imagine a set of instructions as being formatted as vertical numbered lists. And most are in fact. Normally, you format your actual step-by-step instructions this way. There are some variations, however, as well as some other considerations:
• Fixed-order steps are steps that must be performed in the order presented. For example, if you are changing the oil in a car, draining the oil is a step that must come before putting the new oil. These are numbered lists (usually, vertical numbered lists).
• Variable-order steps are steps that can be performed in practically any order. Good examples are those troubleshooting guides that tell you to check this, check that where you are trying to fix something. You can do these kinds of steps in practically any order. With this type, the bulleted list is the appropriate format.
• Alternate steps are those in which two or more ways to accomplish the same thing are presented. Alternate steps are also used when various conditions might exist. Use bulleted lists with this type, with OR inserted between the alternatives, or the lead-in indicating that alternatives are about to be presented.
• Nested steps. In some cases, individual steps within a procedure can be rather complex in their own right and need to be broken down into substeps. In this case, you indent further and sequence the substeps as a, b, c, and so on.
• “Stepless” instructions. And finally there exist instructions that really cannot use numbered vertical list and that do little if any straightforward instructional-style directing of the reader. Some situations must be so generalized or so variable that steps cannot be stated.