The Problem with Process

Srinivas is a hands-on leader and his philosophy is an inclusive one. He believes a team successfully delivers only if it wants to, not because it has to.

  Agile   Governance   New Practitioners   PMO  

Process is a word often used by many team members when justifying the need to do something that they would rather not do. It is almost synonymous with unnecessary work and reason for delays in many teams. It’s one of those things you grimace at when it exists. But at the same time, when you are part of a team that is not following any process, you wish there were processes in place!

I know that most of the team members in all the projects I was part of in the past 15 years were not enamored of “process.” I myself, as someone who strongly believes that a good process contributes a great deal to a successful delivery, have felt the same way sometimes.

I believe the cause for this conundrum is not with the process as a concept. The problem is with the decision to force a predefined process on everyone.

The Reason for Predefined Processes
There is an obvious reason why we are forced to conform to a predefined set of rules and templates. This is the result of trying to work within a chaotic real world environment while trying to handle the desperate need to be able to predict the outcome. Or at least, have someone answerable when the predicted outcome does not come to be.

So, leaders get together and decide that we must follow a specific set of rules and templates. Though sometimes there is a chance to customize some of the processes, there would …

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