Processing the processes

The best thing about working in a start-up is that there are no processes and the worst thing about working in a start-up is that there are no processes. Crazy huh? But that's how it is :( The usual mentality in a start-up is, "Get the customer and just complete the bloody work! And make sure he comes back again!" Doesn't matter if you have to bend over backwards till you get a slip-disk.

I started my career in a big organization, a telecom giant, where everything had a process. It was extremely frustrating at times when the processes hindered quick completion of pending work. We often joked that we would soon receive a process on how to take a loo break, how to pee, etc. But that's how all these big places work and I can totally understand why it is so. With so many people of different mentalities working in a place, processes keep order and peace. At the end of the day work gets done albeit slow.

On the other hand, in a start-up, no such troubles exist. You get a project, everybody jumps in and gets it done. But, in an extremely haphazard manner. Its more like how nature works. Chaotic and yet in tandem with each other. But then nature has probably got an ISO Level process worked out which we are approximately a million years away from. Right now we are just monkeys swinging around in the wild hoping that none of us would slip and fall and break our head.

Ours is in a state where processes have become a requirement to streamline work, increase coordination and smoothen basic functioning. Internal projects continue to run perennially without dead-lines, external projects are taken without a fixed scope due to improper evaluation of the requirement. And even if the requirement is analyzed properly, scope keeps changing due to lose ends in our agreement with the customers. Customer Delight turns into Employee Suicide.

I am not sure whether processes are a solution to all this because I have been in places that either had them or didn't. Never witnessed the change brought in due to setting of processes. A lot of our guys (specially the management) at work realize that processes are inevitable and they need to be introduced and a few are extremely enthusiastic about the same. If my new project works out, then my colleague and I have planned to put in a basic outline of a possible process implementation, partially because it could be a good case to experiment on and partially because it needs a lot of documentation to be done which is possible only if done systematically.

Lets see if that works out :)