Design processes calcify faster than almost any other kind of process. A framework that worked for a ten-person studio becomes doctrine at fifty, then scripture at two hundred — and somewhere along the way the reason for any of it quietly evaporates.
The signals worth watching
- Are reviews producing decisions, or producing more reviews?
- Do the artifacts we ship match the artifacts we show internally?
- Is the best work happening inside the process or despite it?
A healthy process should feel like scaffolding you can take down once the building stands.
Prune quarterly
The point of process is to reduce the cognitive tax of getting good work out the door. The moment a meeting, a doc, or a gate starts adding tax rather than removing it, delete it. You will not miss it. If you do, bring it back — but now you know why it's there.
One rule
If you cannot point to the specific failure a piece of process is preventing, it isn't process. It's inertia.
Ziad Adel runs ScaleFlow, where he helps teams replace busy work with well designed systems. He writes here about what he's learning, usually the night after shipping it.
