Ross Mayfield kicked off a winding discussion with The End of Process
If a knowledge worker has the organization's information in a social context at their finger tips, and the organization is sufficiently connected to tap experts and form groups instantly to resolve exceptions -- is there a role for business process as we know it?
This is the center of people's complaints about "best practices." As soon as a practice (or a process) is documented and written down it is out of date and guaranteed to no longer be the best way to do whatever it was. On the other hand, it is frequently useful to build a common understanding of how things should work. Some of the discussion participants call this "practice" to differentiate from formal, documented "process."