Best Community Practices (BCP) are statements of principle or an agreed upon approach to completing a process, operation, or architectural function. In the NIH Request for Comments document series these documents are designated with a number in the format 'BCPxxxx.'
Background and Purpose
The process governing best community practice documents is described in NRFC0001 “Architecture Standards Process” and is summarized below.
NIH best community practices are a mechanism to standardize practices and the results of deliberations. They are subject to the same basic set of procedures as NIH standards and thus are a vehicle by which stakeholders can define and ratify the community's best current thinking on a statement of principle or on what is believed to be the best way to perform some operation or architecture process function. While these guidelines are generally different in scope and style from architecture standards, their establishment needs a similar process for consensus building.
Furthermore, ICs have a role to play in the enterprise architecture process, independent of domain teams and ad hoc working groups. The best community practice sub-series is a way for the ICs to insert proposals into the consensus-building machinery of the NIH Enterprise Architecture in order to gauge the community's view of that issue.
Process
An IC or other NIH stakeholder submits a best community practice to the Office of the Chief IT Architect (OCITA) to schedule a NIH-wide review. After the minimum ten business days review period and after OCITA has approved the document, the process ends and the document is published. The resulting document is viewed as having the technical approval of the Chief IT Architect.
Because best community practices are meant to express community consensus but are arrived at more quickly than standards, best community practices require particular care. Specifically, best community practices should not be viewed simply as stronger informational NRFCs but rather should be viewed as documents suitable for content different from informational NRFCs.
Process Model
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Create a Best Community Practice: GIF | PDF
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