06 Nov 2003 | pb said...

Despite conventional wisdom, in the vast majority of cases, process is way more important than results. Unlike results, process is repeatable, measurable and improvable.

06 Nov 2003 | Thumper said...

Without process and its documentation, it is difficult to know what made the outcome of a project good or bad. Humans are really poor at reconstructing events, leading to inaccurate predictors of success. And at the end of the day, all we really want is to know what we have to input to get a certain set of outputs.

06 Nov 2003 | Steven Garrity said...

I'm not sure asking if process is more imporant than outcome does much good. It's too vague - both are clearly imporant.

A bit of a tangent, but Dean Allen's An Annotated Manifesto for Growth is a must read.

06 Nov 2003 | dmr said...

Who the hell cares about the process? In the production environment it's all about output; an efficient process is necessary, but process with no attention to output sounds like some artspeak about why something looks the way it does (denying that process can be informed by intuition, experience, knowledge, observations and formal considerations in the case of artmaking).

Bah.

07 Nov 2003 | qwerty said...

Bruce Mau must like the output of bureaucracy, which is all about process.

07 Nov 2003 | DC said...

This is a false choice. Let's break a system down into component part so meaningless it is sure to lead to problems in both process and outcome.

Outcome bias is what causes the corporate screwups repeated in the news. Process bias frequently produces bureaucracies which can't make anything happen. All they do is activity in service to process as end in itself. This is where you get stage-gate processes with all gate, no stage.

Looking at process and outcome as separate instead of parts of a system insures both process and outcome are going to suffer eventually.

07 Nov 2003 | Darrel said...

"it depends"

07 Nov 2003 | Matthew Oliphant said...

I find this manifesto somewhat useful.

I can give it to upper management and executives and they can read a nice bulleted summary of all the things that are good in the world.

And then they will ask me, "Can you make our world like this?"

And I will say, "Yes, yes I can. Just give me a lot of money and get out of my way."

If outcome is the destination, process is the vehicle to get you there. And hopfully you can use the same vehicle for many trips. The vehicle will need to be fixed now and then, and you will contantly have to strive for agreement on the destination from all the passengers.

It is the natural cycle of things to have the outcome drive the process sometimes, and vice versa. I worry more about the things that are external to these two concepts, but are still part of the system.

Measurement. Planning. Accountability.

And hey, don't forget to make all your goals SMART. Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound.

And tack on synergy, out-of-the-box, innovation, and Plastics (wav file).

Meh. I'm with Darrel... it depends.

07 Nov 2003 | RS said...

Process philosophers have interesting things to say on this, like ".. what exists in nature is not just originated and sustained by processes but is in fact ongoingly and inexorably characterized by them" [ Rescher].

The most well-known proponent of process philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead, argued that process (rather than substance) is ontologically fundamental.

07 Nov 2003 | One of several Steves said...

No question process is important. For one, without it, I'd be without a job. With a very process-challenged client, I witness firsthand every day what happens when you don't follow a process and the additional expense that occur when you decide to, say, establish requirements well after you've already designed and started building.

But process is not a panacea. I've worked with project managers who are so anal about process that you end up in paralysis, never getting anywhere.

Have a path to get where you're going (process), but be willing to throw the map out the window when you need to. That's how truly good things are done. It's not process that stifles creativity, it's mindless slavishness to process.

10 Nov 2003 | Ryan Mahoney said...

I think Mau is saying that it is better to enjoy the creative process than to play it safe and be satisfied (or not...) with the results of a coarse of action you are already familiar with. I couldn't agree more! Furthermore, if you know you are unhappy with a certain outcome you have already arrived at, then it is foolish to continue dealing with the issue in the same way in the future. I experience this when I am disatisfied with a drawing, yet embark on the next the same way I approached the first. Maybe I just need to try a little harder, I tell myself. The fear of an unfamiliar failure prevents me from approaching the drawing from a new angle. This thinking prepares me for familiar failure, but does not welcome unknown success.