How To Design A Process People Actually Want To Use
Here’s a collection of concepts that I use when thinking about building a great process:
Have realistic expectations
Confirm you actually need a true Process (vs a reference document/Notion page)
Get crystal clear on what triggers the process to start
Start with low-tech
Enforce a culture of daily task completion
Contort your business to the tools
Standardize terminology, punctuation, and verb tense
Involve the right team members throughout
Use as few tools & technology as possible, but no fewer
Eliminate & re-order steps at every opportunity
Don’t overlap with another process
Don’t manually enter data at runtime if only used once
Just enough process - don’t overengineer, boil the ocean
Build for the common-case, not the rare exceptions
Minimize (but don’t eliminate) conditional logic
Put HOW to do it, WHERE you do it (self-documenting)
Make it easy & fast to start the process
Build in a few hours and deploy immediately. Capture the momentum
Improvements should be incremental
Don’t wait to start. “Minutes are hours, and hours are pain.” -Jon Matzner
Process depreciation is real: you’re never “done” with a process
Resources & Further Reading
Aimee Berkompas
How to think through a process (possibly my favorite article of all time on processes)