No Process is Invisible Process

Published

I was talking to someone the other day about our team process, talking and talking about how our low-process workflow for managing our work and backlog was really great. We don't waste hours and hours in meetings on planning, preparing, estimating, etc, and instead everyone on the team creates tickets, plans out epics, and combs through our backlog also.

However, I realized that this low/no process workflow wasn't actually no process, it was only an "invisible" process. An implicit contract with everyone on the team to do that async workflow on their own time.

This works when there's high trust across the team, the team has jelled, and they have all internalized this invisible process.

You're probably better off building a bit of "real" process instead, if only to set the expectation that the work needs to happen.