Process Is A Good Thing

(Yeah, the above image is about The Landing on the Hudson. We’ll get to that in a bit)

How many times have you heard people complain about Process, about how it “stifles my creativity”, “it’s always getting in the way” and, “if it weren’t for the process I’d be Getting Things Done”?

Don’t get me wrong — I agree that if it’s a bad process, and if it’s implemented poorly, and if the reasons are long since dust in the wind, then, yeah, it’s a Bad Thing.

But, then again, there are a lot of “if”s in that statement.
And the reality is that most of the time, the thing that annoys people isn’t The Process in general, but the specifics of the process as it applies to their very unique needs.
• Alice doesn’t like having the standup at 8:30am because, well, who is actually sentient at 8:30am?
• Bob is fine with the standup, but doesn’t like having to tag every commit with a ticket no.
• Carol, could give two s**ts about ticket numbers, but the weekly status reports are Teh Sux0r, I mean, can’t the Tech Lead just look at her closed tickets?
And so forth.
You get the point, right? That when aggregated across all the individual disgruntlements, you end up with this amorphous distaste of The Process?

The thing is, as humans we are incredibly bad at context switching. Not only can we not do more than 4 things at a time, we suffer terribly from tunnel vision, and get so fixated on the immediate target that we lose track of time, the big picture, and, well, pretty much everything else.

It actually gets worse — we humans prioritize short-term issues over long-term ones. Mind you, this probably made sense when getting away from the tiger NOWNOWNOW was much more important than any kind of long-term planning. But tigers aren’t really after us these days, and we should do better.

This, my friends, is where Process comes in. Process helps clear the mind, and de-clutter the situation — allowing for target fixation to become a feature! You’ve heard about The Checklist Manifesto, right? Apart from the “Checklists! They Work!” message, there is a second point that is frequently overlooked — that automating routines via Process enables creativity in times of extreme stress.

Which, finally, gets us to the Miracle On The Hudson. I assume you’ve seen the movie about it — Sully — or remember the write-ups when it actually happened? There is a little throw-away moment that a friend of mine (a Pilot) pointed out, when after the engines flame out, and they’re trying to restart them, Sully reaches up and turns on the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU).

It’s a little tiny moment, and it happens entirely in flow. What you don’t realize is that that little moment probably saved all their lives! It provided the electricity for everything that they did to safely land the plane on the Hudson. And it’s exactly the kind of thing that you don’t want to be thinking about when all hell is breaking around you — you want to be able to focus on landing the plane, and that’s it.

So yeah, the next time you rail about process (or hear someone do so) reflect on the bigger picture, and ask yourself

1. 1. How much worse could it get without the Process? Are the risks of bypassing or eliminating the Process worth it?
2. 2. Do you even know what all these risks are? Because, well, if you don’t what exactly are you willing to bypass/eliminate?
3. 3. Even if you know the risks, are you in a position to judge them?
4. 4. How does this impact other people on the team, the company, and your customers?

Because, in the end, if you’re just relying on People Doing The Right Thing, well, that isn’t going to end well. The next time you’re feeling particularly disgruntled, ask yourself the above questions, and if — and only if! — the answers are satisfactory, start tweaking…