Process, Process, Process

Since functional managers never produce anything of real value, the one tangible thing they pride themselves on is introducing new processes.  You see, every year functional managers create their plans that align supposedly align their work to the overall business, and it’s these goals that they get evaluated on at the end of the year by their directors (functional managers one level up).

Now here’s the kicker.  These processes are written by new hires!  That’s right, someone who has no idea how things work are busy writing processes.   This is the perfect case of Warm Body Syndrome.

If functional managers wanted process rooted in engineering experience they would have the few good engineers write the process, at least outline the process and then have the new hires make it look pretty.  Instead, new hires write the processes based on their work as they work on projects beyond their skill level.  The end result are processes that don’t make since, are riddled with low level how to detail, are just written to be written, and which show a complete lack of understanding the big picture.

Things get better, these over detailed, unnecessary processes are then forced on new programs as the baseline.  If an experienced engineer doesn’t follow these processes people like King Kong go wild and punish the program and engineer by making them jump throw additional hoops and made up new processes based on their mood.

If you think I’m exaggerating, there is a process which is over 50 pages long which details how to update one document.  If you follow another documented process you end up creating a 40 page review package for a one page test case.

Of course, since these processes are released functional managers achieve their business goals set up at the beginning of the year.  Their business goals are based purely on quantity not quality.

Because I have to follow a 50 page process to update one page in an already existing document I throw rocks.