Death by process

Process is a beautiful thing, my livelihood depends on process. Generally, a process is set-up to accomplish a specific task under a specific set of circumstances. A good process will send you off in a good direction when the circumstances change so that you can either alter your approach,alter the process, or begin following a new process to deal with the new circumstances.

All seems perfectly logical to me. So what's the problem? The problem is trying to fit a process to a set of circumstances that it wasn't designed for. A process consisting of 96 steps designed to work over a period of 60, 90, 120 days or more will not fit into a 15 day period and produce the same results.

Once management invests in the process they want to see it used. That's quite understandable but by trying to apply it where it doesn't belong produces disastrous results. Too often we ignore the fact that the process was misused and blame the process. Worse, we blame the person who championed the process for wasting money or the team implementing the process for being incompetent. Either way, the company is the long-term looser.

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