
Ask HN: Do you have established business processes? - ptcrash
Out of curiosity, I&#x27;d love to hear HN&#x27;s opinion on business process documentation. Please, share your whatever comes to mind but these are the main points I&#x27;d like to hear about:<p>1. How many processes have been documented within your company?<p>2. Do people follow the processes?<p>3. Do you think having formally documented processes is helpful or a hindrance for work?
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ptcrash
Personally, I've worked for a few startups and each one seemed to have little
to no formal process for every function. Being that they are startups, agility
is obviously everything. However, I found that without formal processes (with
flowcharts; the whole nine yards) the companies seemed to have a ton of chaos
surrounding them. I found it somewhat ironic that managers would tout how
impactful _The Phoenix Project_ was but would actively fight any documenting
processes because they feared it would make the company too much of an
enterprise and not a startup. This is just my own anecdotal perception of the
culture of a select number of startups... but it makes me wonder if there is a
correlation between the success of a startup and how well they can define what
each task is. To answer my own question:

1\. About 10% of our processes were defined and documented

2\. Most of the time however they were not enforces

3\. I think, like most things in life, there is a healthy balance between the
two extremes. I think major functions like deployments, SDLC, incident
management, and project life-cycles, should be documented but the auxiliary
things should have lots of freedom. I think that regardless of the amount of
established processes, a startup should be able and willing to adjust them as
soon as a better process is established.

~~~
rogerkirkness
I think the key is to document but not enforce unless it's really clear over
time that enforcing leads to better quality. Strong documentation, loosely
observed.

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looklittlejohn
1\. About half of our processes have been defined

2\. Processes are enforced heavily

3\. I understand why we have certain processes but the company is ruining our
ability to react by adding unnecessary red tape.

