“Process” gets a bad rap these days. Not long ago I worked with a CTO who said “We don’t need any process. What we have is working fine.”

Putting aside whether or not it was working fine (it wasn’t), the idea that we didn’t need a “process” baffled me. Somewhere, somehow, as sometimes happens to different people with different words, this CTO had become alergic to the word “process”.

Don’t fall into that trap.

Merriam-Webster defines process as “a series of actions or operations conducing to an end”.

“Process” is natural. It exists whether you recognize it or not. Claiming you don’t have a process is like claiming you don’t breathe. The only way not to have a process is not to be accomplishing anything!

The only question is whether you have a good process or a bad process. And the first step toward that determination is acknowledging the (possibly unconcious) process you have now.