People, process, delivery and AI. Fixed properly, and measured.

Playbooks / Agreements · 2 min read

Process is an agreement

A process is just people's agreements, written down. If they didn't agree, it isn't one.

The problem

“Nobody follows the process we agreed”

In the model

Process · Agreements

In 30 seconds

  • If you can't say what a process protects in one sentence, delete it.
  • Let the people who do the work rewrite it.
  • Review every process at 90 days: keep, change or kill.
Agree Write it down Use Reviewat 90 days Keep Change Kill "Change" goes back to the people who do the work
A process should have a lifecycle, not just a launch.

The situation

You introduced a release checklist. A month later nobody uses it. Everyone agrees it matters. Nothing changes.

What's really going on

It was written for the team, not with them. It costs them time, protects someone else, and taxes every normal case to cover a rare one.

What to do

  1. Write its job in one sentence. "Stops us shipping without a rollback plan." No sentence, no process.
  2. Hand over the pen. Give the team the sentence and an hour. They'll cut the theatre and keep what matters.
  3. Price every step. How long does it take? How often does it catch something? Cut the steps that never do.
  4. Set an expiry date. Review at 90 days. A process nobody can remove becomes a ritual.

The test

A good process is one the team would reinvent if you deleted it.

How you'll know it's working

  • Lean: every step has caught something real in the last 90 days, or it's gone.
  • Reviewed: every process has a review date, and it's kept.
  • Care check: the people who use it could explain why each step exists.

In the frameworks

  • Disciplined Agile: Choose your WoW: the people who do the work choose and evolve the way it's done.
  • Kanban: Make policies explicit: write the agreements down so everyone plays by the same rules.
  • Scrum: The Definition of Done is an agreement the team owns, not a rule handed down.
  • Lean: Kaizen: small improvements by the people closest to the work.

In other industries

  • Healthcare A triage protocol written by the partners and ignored at reception, because reception were never asked.
  • Accountancy A file-review checklist that grows after every regulator visit and never shrinks.
  • Manufacturing A safety procedure people shortcut because it was written for a different machine.
  • Small business The "how we quote" document that only the owner has read.

What to say

"Nobody's using the checklist, and I don't think that's discipline. I think it's design. Its job is to stop us shipping without a rollback plan. You do the releases, so can you rewrite it to do that and nothing else?"

Try this week

Pick your most-ignored process and write its one-sentence job. If you can't, retire it.

Think about it

Which of your team's processes exists to protect a person who no longer works there?