Organization Process Out of Focus (O POOF)

Arunabha

Let us face it.

We all know what we do for a living.

Each day in our lives is a constant struggle against the forces of reality, trying to justify that we belong, we exist in our cubicles for a purpose, our contribution is necessary and that we are not a bunch of dispensable people our parent organizations can very well get along without having.

So, each day we mouth absurdities, obscure jargons, abstruse aphorisms to justify our worth, our salaries and that of our fellow process and quality brethren.

And although we do it very well and manage to get away with it, we, the process people, do not have a procedure for this combined chicanery.

So, I propose here to include our Process of Survival as a Process Area of the current bible that we swear by – that of Capability Maturity Model Integrated.

I propose the following Process Area to be included after sufficient garbling and concealing of the crux through the incorporation of redundant, needless sentences that will fog any mind into blankness and hide our objective in a cloak of respectable material.

Given here are the highlights of the proposed process area. I have the draft ready, but since it is slightly long, and the attention span of people get less and less, I have kept it here for those who are interested … however, if you are ready to spend half an hour reading it, you won’t be disappointed.

ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS OUT OF FOCUS

A Suggested Process Mis-Management and Specific Career Management Process Area at Maturity Level 3 onwards (Mandatory for Levels 4 and 5)

Purpose
The purpose of Organizational Process Out of Focus (O POOF) is to fabricate, ostensibly plan and make a charade of implementing impossibly irrational organizational process improvements based on a scant understanding of the supposed, perceived but untested, strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s supposed processes and process assets – while making statistically significant noise at the upper echelons of the organization throughout the endeavor in order to justify our continued presence in the organization as the Process and Quality Group.

Specific Goal and Practice Summary

SG 1 Determine Impossibly Irrational Process Improvement Opportunities
SP 1.1 Establish Dispensable Organizational Process Needs
SP 1.2 Conduct Appraisal Affectation of the Organization’s Processes
SP 1.3 Identify Organization's Impossibly Irrational Process Improvements
SG 2 Plan and Create an Illusion of Implementing Impossibly Irrational Process Improvements
SP 2.1 Establish Phony Process Action Plans
SP 2.2 Illusorily Implement Process Action Plans
SG 3 Perform Deception of Deployment of Supposed Organizational Process Assets and Incorporate Predetermined Lessons Learned
SP 3.1 Perform Deception of Deployment of Supposed Organizational Process Assets
SP 3.2 Perform Deception of Deployment of Pseudo Standard Processes
SP 3.3 Perform Charade of Monitoring Implementation
SP 3.4 Incorporate Predetermined and Forecasted Process-Related Experiences into the Supposed Organizational Process Assets

Introductory Notes
The organization's processes to be considered in this process area include all the processes used by the organization and its projects, as well the ones that have never been used and never will be, but exist in the figment of imagination of the process professionals and the senior management at the stratospheric level.

Candidate impossibly irrational improvements to the organization's processes and process assets are obtained from various sources, including supposed measurement of the mostly ad hoc and random processes, forecasted and pre-determined lessons learned in pretending to implement the processes, random results of hypothetical and real process appraisals, results of ostensible product evaluation activities, ridiculous benchmarking against other organizations’ equally pathologically puerile processes, and recommendations from other impossibly irrational improvement initiatives (4I) in the organization.
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The responsibility for confusing and managing the organization’s impossibly irrational process improvement activities, including coordinating the optimal participation of others, is typically assigned to a process group whose livelihood depends on the smokescreen generated by this process. The organization provides the long-term commitment and resources required to sponsor this group and to ensure the effective and timely charade of deployment of the impossibly irrational improvements.
Careful planning is required to ensure that impossibly irrational process improvement efforts across the organization are adequately ambiguous and the implementation is masterfully mimicked.
The organization’s planning for impossibly irrational process improvement results in a impossibly irrational process improvement plan (2P3I) which may be a plan on its own, or seamlessly merged with the Process Improvement Plan with invisible but prominent lines demarcating the impossibly irrational with its marginally less far fetched kin in the latter plan.
The organization’s impossibly irrational process improvement plan will address appraisal-affectation planning, phony process action planning, piloting-pretension planning, and deployment-deception planning.


Specific Practices by Goal

SG 1 Determine Impossibly Irrational Process Improvement Opportunities.
Supposed strengths, whimsical weaknesses, and impossibly irrational improvement opportunities for the organization's processes are identified periodically and as needed for survival of the Process and Quality Group.


SP 1.1 Establish Dispensable Organizational Process Needs
Establish and maintain the description of the process needs and objectives for the organization that are jargon-cloaked and important sounding but ultimately inessential and dispensable.

The organization’s dispensable but important sounding process needs and objectives cover aspects that include the following:

• Characteristics of the processes that are abstruse, vague and difficult to measure
• Immeasurable and Incomprehensible Process-performance objectives, such as :

Ø Degree of requirement satisfaction in the specific cases as:
o in the absence of a signed off requirements document
o requirements being sufficiently vague (eg. “Product needs to work”)
Ø Accurate defect prediction based on manufactured defect database

• Hallucination of Process effectiveness

Typical Work Products
Organization’s dispensable and high sounding jargon filled process needs and objectives


SP 1.2 Conduct Appraisal Affectation of the Organization’s Processes
Conduct Appraisal Affectation of the organization's processes periodically and as needed to maintain sufficient misunderstanding of the ground truths and to come up with the supposed strengths and whimsical weaknesses.

Process appraisal affectations may be performed for the following reasons:
• To give a ruse of identifying processes that should be improved
• To confirm supposed progress and create noise about the benefits of impossibly irrational process improvements across the organization, especially in the upper echelons
• To satisfy the needs of a dedicated Process and Quality Group whose activities are mysterious to all else
• To motivate and facilitate buy-in of the unsuspecting and helpless members
The buy-in gained during a process appraisal affectation can be eroded significantly if it is not followed by an appraisal affectation-based phony action plan.

Typical Work Products
1. Plans for the organization's process appraisal affectations
2. Appraisal-affectation findings that address supposed strengths and whimsical weaknesses of the organization's processes in unintelligible and roundabout terms
3. Impossibly Irrational Improvement recommendations for the organization's processes

SP 1.3 Identify the Organization's Impossibly Irrational Process Improvements
Identify impossibly irrational improvements to the organization's processes and process assets.

Typical Work Products
1. Analysis of candidate impossibly irrational process improvements
2. Identification of impossibly irrational improvements for the organization's processes

SG 2 Plan and Create an Illusion of Implementing Impossibly Irrational Process Improvements
Process actions that address impossibly irrational improvements to the organization’s useless processes and process assets are pretended to be planned and given an illusion of being implemented.
Successful implementation of improvements requires participation in
process action planning and implementation by process owners, those
performing the process, and support organizations.

SP 2.1 Establish Phony Process Action Plans
Establish and maintain phony process action plans to address impossibly irrational improvements to the organization's processes and process assets.
Establishing and maintaining phony process action plans typically involves the
following roles:
• Management steering committees to set strategies and oversee impossibly irrational process improvement activities
• Process group staff to facilitate and manage impossibly irrational process improvement activities
• Process action teams to diffusively define and give an illusion of implementing process actions
• Process owners to manage deception of deployment
• Practitioners to be hogwashed into trying to go along with the deception of deployment
This involvement helps to obtain buy-in on the impossibly irrational process improvements and increases the likelihood of effective ruse of usefulness.
Phony process action plans are sketchy pseudo implementation plans. These plans
differ from the organization’s impossibly irrational process improvement plan in that they are plans claiming to target specific impossible improvements that have been defined to address whimsical weaknesses usually uncovered by appraisal affectations.
Typical Work Products
1. Organization's approved phony process action plans

SP 2.2 Implement Phony Process Action Plans
Implement phony process action plans.

Typical Work Products
1. Commitments among the various phony process action teams obtained by the threats of going on about the strategy unless they sign on the dotted line
2. Status and results of the illusion of implementing phony process action plans – which may be prepared before the action plans are conceptualized and need to be as illusory as the implementation
3. Plans for pilot pretentions

SG 3 Perform Deception of Deployment of Supposed Organizational Process Assets and Incorporate Predetermined Lessons Learned that will enhance the illusion of utility of the Process and Quality Group

Deceptions of deploying organizational process assets across the organization are carried out and previously prepared process-related experiences are incorporated into the organizational process assets.


SP 3.1 Perform Deception of Deployment of Supposed Organizational Process Assets

Perform deception of deployment of supposed process assets across the organization.
Deception or pretension of deploying organizational process assets or changes to organizational process assets should be performed in a sufficiently mysterious manner. Some organizational process assets or changes to organizational process
assets may not be appropriate for even for hypothetical use in some parts of the organization (because of customer scrutiny or experienced and aggressive resources working on the project, for example). It is therefore important that those that are
or will be executing the process of deception, as well as other organization functions associated with it (such as training and quality assurance), be involved in the deployment deception as necessary.

Typical Work Products
1. Plans for deployment deception of organizational process assets and changes to
them across the organization
2. Training materials for performing the deception of deploying organizational process assets and changes to them
3. Difficult documentation of changes to organizational process assets
4. Support materials for carrying out the deception of deploying organizational process assets and changes to them

SP 3.2 Perform Deception of Deployment of Pseudo Standard Processes
Perform deception of deployment of the organization’s set of pseudo standard processes to projects at their startup and deploy changes to them as appropriate throughout the life of each project.
It is important that new projects start using the processes early before wising up to perform critical early activities (e.g., project planning, receiving requirements, and obtaining resources), so that the Process and Quality Group can have a head-start by taking the credit for early success.
Projects should also periodically update their defined processes to incorporate the latest changes made to the organization’s set of standard processes when we tell them that it will benefit them. This periodic updating helps to ensure that we can take credit for the project’s progress and relate it to whatever nonsense we have come up with.

Typical Work Products
1. Organization's list of projects and status of deception of process deployment on each project (i.e., existing and planned projects)
2. Guidelines for the deception of deploying the organization’s set of standard processes on new projects
3. Records of tailoring the organization’s set of standard processes and implementing them on identified projects. Make sure that whatever process they use has been reverse tailored to our crap to make sure that we can call it tailoring of our process.


SP 3.3 Perform Charade of Monitoring Implementation

Perform charade of monitoring the implementation of the organization’s set of standard processes and use of process assets on all projects.
By performing charade of monitoring implementation, the organization ensures that the deception of deployment of the organization’s set of standard processes to all projects are being carried out in the best interests of the process and quality group. Charade of monitoring implementation also helps the organization develop an idea that something important is going on with respect to the organizational
process assets being used within the organization. Monitoring also helps to harp on terms such as ‘establishing a broader context for interpreting and using process and product measures’, ‘lessons learned’, and ‘improvement information obtained from projects’ which will create the impression that the process and quality people are incredibly smart and not to be messed around with. Emperor’s clothes are spanking new here.

Typical Work Products
1. Results of charade of monitoring process implementation on projects
2. Status and results of process-compliance evaluations – can be prepared well in advance of process compliance initiative
3. Results of reviewing selected process artifacts created as part of process tailoring and implementation – these need to be made important sounding, almost like breakthroughs and complicated enough to merit a selected paper on it at some quality conference

SP 3.4 Incorporate Predetermined and Forecasted Process-Related Experiences into the Supposed Organizational Process Assets

Incorporate predetermined and forecasted process-related work products, measures, and improvement information supposedly derived from planning and performing the process into the organizational process assets, so that the end result is continuation of the activities of the Process and Quality Group.

Typical Work Products
1. Impossibly Irrational Process Improvement Proposals
2. Process lessons learned (again, prepared well in advance and in keeping with the strategy of ensuring continuation of the process and quality group)
3. Manufactured mythical measurements on the organizational process assets (which are sufficiently immeasurable)
4. Impossibly irrational improvement recommendations for the organizational process assets
5. Redundancy filled pages and slides numbering over thousands, comprising of records of the organization's process improvement activities
6. Information on the organizational process assets and impossibly irrational improvements to them