Process is not sexy

Because you’re doing it wrong

Process is not inherently a sexy idea. You might even say it has a bad rap.

Its counter-culture, the “hackers” and those who like to “do it live”, often associate process with bureaucracy, slow decision-making, and assembly line-like production. However, if you subscribe to this school of thought, I’d like to make the argument that you just might be doing it wrong.

Let me start by dispelling a few common beliefs around what process is (and isn’t).

Process is not:

• More time invested
  The most common argument I’ve heard against process is “we need to move quickly”. This comes from the underlying belief that process makes everything take longer. Process, however, is merely about breaking down a challenge into a systematic series of variables that enables a team to tackle it more intelligently and effectively. If applied correctly, it should take the same or even less time to accomplish the objectives.
• Rigid
  Many think of process as a linear set of steps that tells them, rather robotically, how to arrive at a solution. This isn’t a process. A good process should have many moving parts and account for changing environments, contexts, and variables. A great process is dynamic.
• Planning everything
  The fear of over-planning is a common theme, and it rightfully should be. The key to process is planning only what is necessary and sufficient to take the next step (sometimes that means needing to do some holistic planning, sometimes that means literally only worrying about the next step). A great process acknowledges uncertainty and arms a team to be resilient when new variables get defined or when existing ones change.
• Perfection
  There’s sometimes an odd confusion between having process and requiring perfection. While process suggests a better approach to arriving at the intended destination, it doesn’t attempt to change the objectives.
• Static
  Anyone with experience building process will tell you that a cookie cutter template won’t cut it. Process is an ever-evolving tool that needs to be examined continuously in order to adapt to the changes around a team and a project.

Fundamentally, process is about isolating variables and providing clarity to how each variable will be addressed. This, in turn, provides the gift of focus — the ability to work on solving one aspect at a time with faith that the other pieces will also fall into place in due time.

Keep in mind that how much process you need is dependent on what you’re doing. You may still find yourself in contexts where little to no process is actually needed. Hackathons are a perfect example where a short timeline and a small team make the need for process relatively low.

That being said, I think you’ll find the need for process increases as:

• time (e.g. project length) increases
• team size increases
• significance of project increases

Process is sexy

Remember: process is not for the sake of process — it’s for the sake of helping great people do great work (which in itself, is a pretty sexy idea). And if you understand that people constantly change, adapt, and grow, then you must accept that process must also change, adapt, and grow with them.

In other words, if you’re not thinking about process, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Beyond the Process: Build a Practice

Having a solid process is the first step, but what you should be pushing to build is a practice. Put simply, a practice is a set of processes, tools, mechanisms, and resources that supercharges your team to face any challenge. If you’re interested, someone once wrote a handy framework for building a design practice (spoiler: it was me).