Processes – Adorable, Achievable, Applicable

I will start this blog with an anecdote. Recently one of my friends working in a mid sized company came to me and discussed this scenario. He was testing something when his manager came to him and asked to update the Software Test Management Plan (STMP) as per the testing cycle that he had performed and still performing. My friend asked him not to follow this practice as this is not fair in terms of processes. All the STMP contents should be finalized and updated before the kit released to the testing team. After that each and every action item should be tracked and presented to the management in the Test Summary Report (TSR). In this way they can easily track the variances in the Software Test Cycle. I totally agree with my friend’s opinion. Not because of that he is my friend but because of whatever he said was right. But the interesting thing happened after this.

His manager was not happy with the facts that he told him. He simply said that this is the process and you should follow it. When my friend asked what do you mean by a Process? He got a very interesting answer. “Whatever I said is a process.”

I was totally shocked after hearing this statement from a manager about the process. This means that whatever your manager says is a process. Or in better words – managers are always process oriented because whatever they are saying is a process.

Now the question is “What do you mean by a Process?”

A Process is an agreement between two parties about how do the things will be done between them. If there are no agreements, there are no processes. And the worst part is if there are broken agreements, which mean you have broken processes.

There is always a negotiation between the processes and their implementation. Negotiation is processes of interaction among parties who have differing, conflicting, or competing goals but want to seek a solution agreeable to all. To constructively engage in negotiation, it is helpful to think of it as a collaborative process. The goal isn't "winning" but to find an agreeable solution that accommodates everyone’s needs.

I have seen in my carrier that sometimes processes (or edited processes) are often rejected because the management believes these improvements are nothing more than a self-serving attempt by someone to make a name for him. They don’t believe that the new processes and process improvements really are meant for the good of the project. What to do now? In my opinion, producing positive results will always be more beneficial than focusing on new processes or process improvements because it will eliminate the belief that you are offering a new process simply because you don’t understand the existing one.

Sometimes, I have seen that new processes are unfamiliar and perplexing. The longer the process, the longer before new team members understand how the various parts of the process fit with each other. You can speed this understanding by shrinking the time taken by the process. This is called the process miniature. Run the entire process in a very short time period (a few minutes to a few days).

To perfectly implement the processes, one should use statistical and quantitative analysis to understand and improve them. You goal should not be of making “Good Control Charts”. Understand that some of the process data you evaluate is based on product characteristics (defect density) that may have causes outside or unrelated to the process being analyzed. Look outside the process and product to the people executing the process for help. And the most important is that if your company is CMMI Level 4, 5 and it doesn’t help in your processes and their improvements, why they have gone for this Level and what are the company’s goal to achieve this level? Wrapping ourselves in the flags of ISO, CMM, or Six Sigma doesn't make our users feel any better. We have to implement the processes and measure the effects of them in the Software Life cycle.

Sometimes what I have seen that an organization may have a quality process in place, but when schedules get tight, schedules win, and the quality process goes out the window. In this scenario, our actions are driven by many motivators. These motivators shape our processes—those that we really follow. These motivators are more stable than processes, for they come from the deeply held values of the organization.

This is a true and valuable point that processes will always affect tasks. And also no one will follow the processes if he is not interested in following them. Also the processes will be followed by anyone if they are feasible in the real environment with the real people. Processes should be prepared and planned in such a way that they can be used by REAL people to achieve their REAL tasks in the REAL world.

Solo efforts are OK, but the process is much richer when other members of the project community are involved. Once the process is good, many errors and faults can be caught before the damage is done.

So the whole episode has turned up into an extract that your processes should be

• Adorable
• Achievable
• Applicable
  

Adorable means that processes should be lovable by those who will have to follow them.

Achievable means capable of existing or taking place or proving true; possible to do.

Applicable means capable of being applied; having relevance.

This is all about the 3A Processes.

-- Sanat Sharma