There have been many ways of convincing others why a process is important. By process I mean a way of doing things, in a certain order, by certain roles, at certain times. Whether it is tooled or documented or just verbally agreed on. It is very important that all the team members agree to follow the process, otherwise it fails.
During discussions I realized one important aspect of a team - the common sense is never common. It is rare to find another team member with a common sense as common as yours. And common sense is what hurts at times, because it makes decisions implicit, so obvious that they do not get discussed with the team.
Why is the common sense different? Probably because each one of us is playing a different role and we have different responsibilities. Also, our knowledge and experience plays an important role in building our common sense.
A lot of times this might go against what is good for the team. A process does not rely on your common sense for decisions, it lays down the path for you. Some of it might be really common sense for your, some not. However, it is the common sense for the team, for the project, for the company - whatever vision you are working towards.
Of course, the catch is that designing the process is not trivial. It is usually an ongoing and evolving in itself. And in certain small setups, especially in one-man armys, the common sense is more dominant. However, with the addition of even one person in the team it is important to normalize and get everyone on the same ground. A process can help you do that, common sense cannot.
July 5th, 2007 at 11:50 am
[...] sense is not as common as I wish it to be. But Abhijit Nadgouda wrote recently about how you can count on process where common sense fails. I snidely say that this in itself is common sense. But of course, [...]