Your process manuals are not up to date? Awesome!

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You could easily think I'm  only busy with creating ‘funny’ process models and twittering cynical quotes, but I also spend quite some time at organizations who want to ‘do something with processes’.

And, as always, mapping processes and putting them in nice process manuals seems to be a flu you can’t get rid of.

In no time we end up in discussions about how hard it is too keep those process manuals up to date. 

A mean question we always ask then: Do you think your customer is expecting up to date process manuals?  I don’t think so.  

Those (process)customers just want that your processes are designed in a way that those processes are able to do what they promise.  

Grip on the execution of processes (hopefully useful ones!) is the only thing that counts in the end.  And, during execution that may mean that processes will indeed change often because of different properties of a process instance (a customer that has different wishes).

And with that it is also stated that a process is not the same as ‘standardization’.  Processes are just processes (the ‘things’ that deliver results). 

Standardization is just one of many solutions to get grip on your processes.  And for processes where ‘adaptation’ is important, standardization might even cause bigger problems.

So, it’s always funny to see that, depending on someone’s point of view, goal and means can be mixed up very easily. 

Ever seen an organization whose goal was to keep it’s process manuals up to date? 





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