In Reality, It Is a Process That Makes a Difference
Introduction
In this review, I explain why processes are imperative.
The Process Idea
A Process is a series of sequential executable steps which produce something. A process is a means to an end.
Every department and every operational aspect of a company runs on processes.
Many larger companies have a dedicated Operations & Methods department responsible for evaluating, creating, applying, and training employees to follow processes.
There are people everywhere whose profession is to improve existing processes and make them more efficient and easier to implement.
The entire world surrounding us was and is built through processes.
Do Away with Process
The prevalent fear with processes is that they could become entrenched, which is problematic if the process itself is rigid, laborious, overly-detailed, plain flawed, or outdated.
Also, depending on the company size, culture, and personalities of the people involved, obsessively applying and adhering to the process can become the objective rather than achieving the outcome the process was supposed to deliver.
Who hasn’t had a Kafkaesque experience at the bank or a government office where a nonsensical process, full of inconsistent procedures and paperwork, leads you nowhere, and the only way out is via “supervisor manual override”?
Consequently, processes have been categorically derided, yet doing so is a mistake because only destructive processes should be rejected.
A separate claim against processes is that they create a silo mentality, the notion of disjointed teams working in their little islands while little communicating or collaborating.
A flawed process can create a silo mentality, but a good process will have the opposite effect of getting everybody working together in the same direction.
In reality, processes cause far more good than harm.
The Good Process
When a business process is good, and everything falls into place, the benefits are enormous to the company, employees, and customers.
Good processes yield positive output and enhance employee morale, generate savings, build a brand, promote customer satisfaction, stimulate team cohesion, etc.
Processes provide guidance and structure, help minimize risk, allow better integration of newcomers, foster speed and efficiency, handle detail and complexity, enable knowledge sharing, and offer a repeatable approach for delivery.
Processes allow scaling any team’s activities, be it product development, marketing, or product management.
Relative to product management, a process is needed to identify and create product value.
In reality, it is a good process that makes a difference.
Agile Overzealousness
Many software development companies adopted the Agile Manifesto (promoted as the theory) and Scrum (promoted as the practice) combination as a way to build software.
Using 1960s lightweight software development principles (minimal, simplified, iterative), the Agile Manifesto, introduced in 2001, was designed to alleviate the monetary and contractual implications of modifying the feature set while custom software development is ongoing.
The first of the four Values (declared preferences) of the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.
This value was meant to promote internal team interaction, foster a free-flowing dialog with the customer, and drive the development process with creative ideas.
Over-interpretation and misuse of this value marginalized or invalidated “processes” with some audiences.
Yet, experience demonstrated that one could not accomplish much or build anything, especially software, by relying solely on high-level rhetoric in the form of values and a mindset.
Values and mindset are sorts of compasses, but insufficient alone.
You must extrapolate values and the mindset into roles, processes, techniques, and tasks to accomplish things.
The Agile Manifesto is a framework, and to build a working methodology of any kind, you need a framework, models, and methods. Those models and methods are based on processes.
Summary
Good processes are inspired by and embody a good theory.
Designing a good process is challenging to say the least.
I believe in good processes, so the Blackblot PMTK Methodology™ is built on best practices and holds many procedures for product management, product planning, product definition, and product marketing.
Integrating good processes into a company’s operations, minding existing work culture and personalities involved, will allow any organization to leverage some or most of the benefits I describe in this review.
Ultimately, Process Wins!