“Processes” is a word that no one wants to hear, especially in the start-up space where everyone is more interested in going live in the shortest possible time and a “process” is oftentimes viewed as an unnecessary mechanism that brings in delays. What people don’t realize is that it’s the one thing that brings in predictability whether it’s in terms of delivery or the quality of the deliverable. Both these are the very lifeblood of survival in the start-up space where great business solutions may falter and die due to the lack of quality in the product or inability to bring out the solution in time.
Of course, processes can be and are, very different, depending on the development life-cycle that is followed and the various standards that are followed eg ISO, CMMI etc.
In the enterprise space, a standard like ISO is the most common followed by CMMI. CMMI Level 5 enables organisations to closely monitor the effectiveness of their processes using statistical techniques and ensures standardisations across the enterprise whilst allowing innovation to prosper in a controlled fashion. These processes, while bearing great benefits when properly done also need a huge amount of resources in terms of support staff, training, tools etc. and require a great deal of maturity to implement. Most of these are lacking in a typical “Start-up” and what start-ups require are streamlined, efficient and effective processes with tooling built in across all phases of the development and release life-cycle.
The Agile development methodologies like “SCRUM” along with “DevOps” focus on collaboration, effective automation across development, testing and release management to speed-up the entire development and maintenance cycles thus allowing teams to align very quickly to the market needs. “Speed to market” is often a key differentiator for start-ups.
The human element is often forgotten in the quest for the perfect process but, according to me, it’s the one thing that makes or breaks the effectiveness. If people perceive the process as one that’s being enforced and a headache to follow, then it becomes one. What is needed is people to view it as their own process and one that can and should be tweaked to make it easier to implement as well as to make it more effective. Once this mind-set is in place innovations roll in as people think out-of-the-box to make it more effective be it through tooling or through a change in the process steps.
The trick in having a great process is to get true ownership of that process from the people who implement it.
Start-ups focus on moving from “Burn” to “Earn” as rapidly as possible in order to survive and having the right process in place enables them to do just that with confidence as a great business solution with great quality and quick releases to fine-tune the offerings to the need of customers enable quick sales and adoption of their solutions.
