Rules of Thumb - Process

Maybe it's just the companies I've worked in as CIO but process often gets a bad name in the context of IT governance. Even companies such as FedEx with a very strong process culture within the Operations environment were initially reluctant (put mildly) to put a structured governance process in place. A Sr. VP there, when I first introduced a resource management process, told me that she didn't appreciate being "second-guessed".

The issue I think almost always comes down to a perception that IT process is meant to put up roadblocks. Process management should be the way to streamline everything from resource allocation and prioritization to delivering the products that the organization needs. Process provides not only a way to measure, manage and improve but to make the goings-on within IT transparent. Transparency is very often the one key ingredient that's missing. It provides management with the insight and confidence needed to determine the resources are being invested wisely.

Even developers can be reluctant to embrace process discipline. This can be as simple as check-in/check-out discipline to appropriate testing to time tracking. Time tracking is one I'm particularly sensitive to because I don't like feeling like someone's looking over my shoulder any more than anyone else. That said, I look at time tracking from the perspective of figuring out where we're spending our resources. The goal is two-fold (at a minimum): first you can't improve estimation without tracking and comparing actuals vs estimate; second the only way to ensure we're working on the right priorities is to track time. I don't mean every minute. For most efforts, measuring in increments less than 1/2 a day is too fine-grained to matter very much.

At every turn, process remains the way out of the chaos that often seems to envelope the high demand IT environment.