The Invention of Process

Just finished reading "Rework"( Link to Rework )

As usual, class-A material from people who execute well. They have their act together...truly. I love the fact that their goal isn't to cater to the Fortune 500...they cater to the Fortune 5,000,000! The know where they stand and that's where their power comes from.

There's a chapter towards the back about Policy, and how in many instances, policies are "codified overreactions to situations that are unlikely to happen again." I totally agree!

This brings to mind a quote from a book that I read a long time ago on the making of the atom bomb. Edward Teller, a Nobel Prize winner and father of the hydrogen bomb, was advocating the use of a bomb on an asteroid as an experiment. Someone remarked, "If you've got a problem, Eddie's got a bomb!" Basically there were a lot of idle bomb experts sitting around after the war ended...

Well, the same holds true for process: If you've got a problem, [Insert Name here] down the hall has a process". The proliferation of processes is something you've got to watch out for. Several things can happen:

1. The process is actually too cumbersome, and people circumvent it.

2. It leads to a false sense of security that everyone is doing the right thing and that they're delivering quality software because all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed.

3. Following the process doesn't mean you're even delivering anything of value. To be zen here, "Like the finger pointing at the moon, the finger is NOT the moon". Likewise, following a process is no guarantee of anything. It just means that some auditing team can catch you if you didn't upload some documents in a timely manner.

Ditto for templates...