Fix the relationship before the process

Mike Schaffner pointed me to a great new blog titled ‘Bridging the gap between business and IT‘ written by Laura Brandau.  The description of the blog is:

Bridging the Gap between Business and IT is about helping information technology professionals improve how they engage with the business community.

Looks like a great blog.

While looking around the blog I found a post titled “Fix yourself before you fix ‘the process‘”. What a great title.

There are a couple of quotable passages in Laura’s post but the one that best describes the post is:

Processes and best practices are less important than good thinking.

Laura continues on to say that processes are good but as IT professionals, we should stop and think about why we are building them. She writes:

In the best of cases, we are trying to fix situations that caused failed IT projects.  In the worst of situations, we have preconceived (and incorrect) notions of what our role is and how it should be done that we are trying to force on our workmates and organizations.

Perfect.  How many times have you run up against a process that just makes no sense…and when you talk to others in the organization they agree with you.

Laura’s suggestion to fix yourself before you fix the process is a great one.  She writes:

…the point is to fix yourself and your relationships with your workmates first, not the process.  More than likely when you start moving in this direction, the problems you saw with the process will dissipate.

Relationships first, process second.  That’s the way it should be.  A process won’t “fix” the problem in most instances…it will just exacerbate the issues.  Work on fixing the people issues first and then look at the process.

I think I’m going to like reading Bridging the Gap between Business and IT.