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Adding New Process Activities Should Always Be the Least
Preferred Choice
Adding new process activities should always be your least preferred choice
when developing new process assets, or improving existing ones. This point
was made in the previous chapter through the focus placed on “always asking
the intent question,” and digging for the “real existing practice” that is achiev-
ing that intent when there isn't a clearly related problem in the organization.
But why is it so important to find these “real existing practices,” if they exist,
rather than just add an activity that is known to meet the practice and has
been proven to work in other organizations?
The reason—simply put—is that changing human behavior is the hardest
and most costly part of process improvement. Furthermore, if the change
isn't solving a real problem associated with your business needs, it is likely
you are degrading your organizational performance with this change.
Therefore, making such changes should in almost all cases—and I'll address
some exceptions in this chapter—add clear value to the effort in the eyes of
the process improvement team and those who are asked to use the process.
Now, some might object by saying that those who must follow the process do
not need to see the value. They might say, if it has been determined that the
value exists, those who execute the process just need to follow the rules.
While there are a few cases where this line of reasoning might be true, in gen-
eral, if you force process activities on people where the value of those
activities is not clear, experience has shown that the intended value will not
be achieved.
A previous example of this was forcing formal peer review meetings in an
organization that was already removing defects effectively by less formal
techniques. Other examples might include forcing meeting minutes or action
items at the wrong time or in the wrong way. This is not to say meeting min-
utes and action items are not necessary—they are, even in Agile
organizations—but there is an appropriate time and technique to handle
such activities, which we will explain in this chapter.
By not being sensitive to the existing culture, including what is working
and what isn't in your organization, you might inadvertently initiate what
I refer to as “creeping non-value-added effort.” This will take your organi-
zation away from what works best. That is not the intent of process
improvement.
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