Lean Processes over Stone Tablets

You need a process. All teams do.

But the moment your team starts spending more time making sure they're adhering to your process than working on your product, it’s time to take a hard look at what’s going on. A process should help your team move faster, stay aligned, and deliver value. It shouldn't become some sacred relic that requires constant attention (and a blood sacrifice or two to modify).

That’s where too many teams go off the rails. They think (or get told) the goal is to implement a framework, or to follow a playbook to the letter. But all that structure means nothing if your users never see a working product.

What Makes a Good Process

It doesn’t matter if you’re building software, a logistics plan, or a roadside produce stand—a good process should make sure you're providing these three things:

• Clear Purpose

  • The team should know what they’re building, who it’s for, and why it matters. “We need a way to do X so the user can stop wasting time on Y and focus on their actual job.” That’s the kind of understanding you want to bake in.

• Transparent Execution

  • You shouldn’t need a 30-slide deck or a 90-minute meeting to figure out what’s going on. Stakeholders, leadership, or other teams should be able to drop in and quickly understand where things stand, what’s at risk, and what’s changing.

• Fast, Reliable Delivery

  • Finished work shouldn’t collect dust waiting on deployment gates or mystery approvals. If you’re building stuff people need, you should be able to get it to them without jumping through 14 hoops.

If your process supports those three things, you’re in decent shape. If it doesn’t, then it’s time to admit it’s probably in the way. If it does support these three things, but everyone hates it, you've probably got some pruning to do.

Common Traps Teams Fall Into

Process bloat rarely starts out malicious. Most of the time it’s just over-engineering, like:

• Trying to create a process that accounts for every possible edge case and scenario before you’ve actually delivered a single thing.

• Rolling out a giant framework or “agile at scale” model when you barely have one team running cleanly.

• Worrying about "not being Agile” because you don’t do standups every single day, or because you hold your retros one day before the sprint ends, or some other ritualistic offense that will definitely bring bad Agile juju to your team.

  
  

A Local Example

There’s an ol’ boy from just down the road that spent the last 40 years or so working on a process that produces NCAA Football championships. You’ve probably heard of him before: Nick Saban.

Coach Saban is known for being a process guy. He’ll preach “do the right things the right way” until the cows come home. But the part a lot of people miss is this:

The process was never his goal. Winning was.

Every step of his process—every drill, every meeting, every bit of film study—was there to help the team do one thing: win football games.

And when his process wasn't quite giving him the results he wanted? He changed it. He overhauled his defense. He brought in new blood. He threw out parts of his own system because the outcome mattered more than the ritual.

That’s how you should think about process on your team.

Build something that works for your team. Make it clear, make it visible, and make it deliver.

And if it starts slowing you down? Strip it down, change it up, and test it out.

And if you need some help? Give me a call.