How are the processes in your organization? Do people follow them? Do they work well?

Many if not most of the companies I visit struggle when it comes to process. Process continues to be a four-letter-word. Processes are viewed as bureaucratic, cumbersome, overly-complex and slow. In most cases, these views are indeed warranted.

I recently spent the evening with two senior IT leaders from a major technology company. They work in what I call a "loose" IT environment. They have little or no governance and very little formal process. Their teams are comprised of people who have worked together for many years and "just get the work done."

This model has served them in the past, quite successfully. But the company has recently experienced incredible success and growth and the work is coming at a much faster rate while staffing levels remain the same. Yes, the work is still getting done, but these two Senior IT Leaders see disaster looming on the horizon. The pain and negative residue has greatly increased from the chaos and aftermath of informal and ad hoc work processes. They anticipate a day of reckoning if they don't take action.

The actions they are investigating are governance and process, and they do so at their own peril. Their company views these disciplines in a very negative light. These two Leaders recognize they have a tough row to hoe ahead and we spent the evening discussing their challenge and sharing ideas.

My time with them inspired me to post a list of very high-level recommendations for introducing governance and process to an organization that is dead-set against these conventions.

1. Ensure you have an acute understanding of customer needs and your business objectives
2. Uncover and reveal the problems associated with meeting those needs and objectives
3. Recognize and learn to empathize with those who feel the most pain from these problems
4. Identify an Executive Sponsor and/or enlist a legion of rank-and-file supporters
5. Quantify the cost of the problems
6. Ascertain the potential solutions to the problems
7. Quantify the cost of the solutions
8. Recognize and listen to the people that are against your solutions or just anti-process
9. Do not take a prescriptive approach to any proposed solution
10. Know there is no one-size-that-fits-all
11. Select the correct "flavor" of the solution - dictated by the specific problems to be solved and influenced by the current culture, capacity, and capability of the organization
12. Thoughtfully implement the solution - in multiple iterative phases that produce measurable improvements quickly
13. Take what you learn from previous process implementation phases and apply that knowledge to improving subsequent phases
14. Constantly strike the balance between too much and too little process and between too complex and too simple
15. Take a sympathetic position with everyone who hates your process and gain an understanding of what incents them to avoid, undermine or destroy your process
16. Measure results and respond accordingly

Yes, this is a very high-level and minimal list, but I think it's a good start. I could expand on any of these points to an enormous degree but I want to keep this post simple. I would love to hear what you think of the list and if you have anything to add. I, like the two IT Leaders taking on the process challenge, can always use the help.

Steve Romero, IT Governance Evangelist