Do you have processes in your organization? I have encountered countless folks who say, "We aren't a process shop. We don't have processes." Insert your most annoying incorrect-answer-sound-effect here. They are wrong. Everyone has process.

One of the five presentations I deliver with regularity is my favorite, "How to Ensure Process Success." For those of you who have read my blog, you know I love processes and I love process management. And this is coming from an IT-guy, an IT-guy to the bone. It has always made me an anachronism in every organization in which I have worked, where process was always a four-letter-word.

My process presentation is 90-minutes when I deliver the full version. This may seem a bit long, but it hardly does the subject justice. In addition to the business case for processes, I cover the 3 domains of Process Management: Process design, Process implementation, and Managing Processes. I try to give folks sufficient appreciation for each of these areas to inspire them to spend the appropriate time and effort immersing themselves in the discipline - to the extent necessary for them to apply these process conventions to their organizations.

The subject of this post is based on the very first slide of my Process Presentation. The sub-heading of that slide is "Everyone has Process." I start with this slide because I want to immediately dispel the misconception or myth that any organization can do anything without processes.  They may not have "formal" processes and instead have processes with some if not all of the following attributes:

• Crossing multiple disparate functional boundaries
• Ad hoc, informal, inconsistent
• Unknown, unnamed, unrecognized
• Fragmented, haphazard, disjointed, disconnected
• Incoherent, complex, chaotic
• Lacking continuity, uncoordinated, not integrated
• Not managed, not measured

I tell audiences the next time somebody in their organization claims they don't have processes, they can respond, "Yes, we do. We have process with these characteristics." They aren't formal, they aren't documented, they aren't consistent or repeatable, you can't measure them, but they are still processes.

After an organization admits it does indeed have ad hoc or informal processes, but processes nonetheless, the next question should be, "Is this OK?" This is critical to any potential process design or process improvement effort. As bad as the above list inherently appears, it doesn't necessarily mean they should change the situation. I actually defend processes with the above attributes, when:

• Products and Services are awesome
• Customers are delighted and opening their checkbooks
• Employees are productive, content and loyal
• Competitors are being crushed

If this is the case, then by all means, they should not change a thing. They should keep their processes just the way they are.

But if their products and services aren't performing as desired, if their customers aren't delighted, if their employees aren't whistling while they work, if their competitors are eating their lunch, then they should take a look at their processes. They already have them. They just aren't what they need to be.

Steve Romero, IT Governance Evangelist