Best Practices - Dialogue between Test Analyst (TA) and Quality Analyst (QA)

Here goes the conversation happened today between a test analyst and quality analyst regarding “Best Practices”

TA: Hi, Good Morning and I have news for you and it’s that I have identified a best Practice for our testing project we are currently working on.

QA: Had you started implementing that practice or just identified.

TA: Just identified and we are planning to implement.

QA: Oh No! Then you cannot call/claim it as a best practice.

TA: Why is it so?

QA: You had just identified a practice that was not yet implemented in a project and you had not experienced its good results of following it and hence you cannot call it as a Best practice.
Also is that practice you are going to implement a step or part of our organization’s QMS definitions/processes/steps/practices mentioned.

TA: No I had checked and it’s a new one.

QA: That’s nice. Should not have been already mentioned in our organization QMS.

TA: OK.Is there any other constraints?

QA: Yes. A new practice that is applicable only to a specific project team and could not be applied across the organization, is not a best practice

TA: Okay and Thanks for your nice explanation. I will come back to you after implementing this practice in my project with the evidences of its good results. Thank you and bye for now.

After few hours of this conversation I had asked myself what the lessons are learnt by me from this discussion and the answers are

1. Some organizations have best practices (can we say best practices or conditions/guidelines?) to claim some practices as best or not.
2. Without implementing and having the results, a practice merely cannot be claimed as a best practice. This is obviously true.
3. The best practices of a specific project do not work out for other projects within the organization since the context of projects differ. Then how this QA is claiming “A new practice that is applicable only to a specific project team and could not be applied across the organization, is not a best practice”. I really disagree with this point.

Best practices to claim practices as best—a good research topic for any IT guy to research further?