Although most businesses, especially within the software industry, have well defined processes describing how they run their business, it varies how closely these processes are actually being followed.
That’s not necessarily bad …
The businesses that do not follow their own processes to the letter can still have successful projects, happy customers and good profits. Maybe even more so than businesses that strictly follow their own processes. After a while, people might forget why they defined the processes in the first place. One reason could be, that once upon a time, they discovered they were being ineffective at their work or making a lot of mistakes and decided that they could improve by adding structure to their work and accomplished this by defining processes and hiring people to ensure the processes were followed.
10 years later the processes remain the same but the company, the projects and the employees have changed. Yes, the processes could be updated, but in any case, they would never fit every possible situation in the company.
In my opinion, we should follow processes the same way moderately religious people follow texts written thousands of years ago. It might be mentioned in the historic texts describing Muhammad’s life, that he recommended travelling to Mecca by mule. Religious people who reads this, understands that it was said in a different context and that it shouldn’t be followed to the letter now.
I would giggle (but be impressed too) if a Muslim from Indonesia insisted on travelling to Mecca by mule. I find it equally ridiculous to follow all processes to the letter. Some are OK, like processes in accounting where it’s really not that clever to skip a step. But ask yourself: “Does anyone really need this?”.
If you HAVE to follow processes to the letter, make it part of your processes that people have to think for themselves.
(note, the illustration depicts Jesus on a mule, as more relevant illustrations were unavailable)
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