Processes are easy to create, and there are so many around because creating a process gives you an easy way out with a false sense of victory that you’ve solved the problem.
Whenever a process is introduced:
- There should be a mandatory formal devil’s advocate role to argue against the process.
- A process should always have a cost, a success metric, and an evaluation timeline. Without these, a process should not even be tabled for discussion.
Whenever someone in an organization proposes to add a new check, they should have to explain not just the benefit but the cost. No matter how bad a job they did of analyzing it, this meta-check would at least remind everyone there had to be a cost and send them looking for it. source.
- A process that doesn’t pass the success metric at the pre-defined timeline should be automatically killed without any discussion. Err on the side of killing the process.