UnknownProcess

The process to be used is unfamiliar or inappropriate

Description

The process to be used is unfamiliar or inappropriate. A process may be inappropriate by being inadequate, inefficient or unattainable. An unfamiliar process is temporarily unattainable.

Discussion

This whole website is dedicated to what makes a process appropriate and how to tailor a process to make it appropriate. To be appropriate, a process must be Adequate – it must produce the required products. It must be Efficient – it should not cost more than necessary. It must be Attainable – it must be capable of being enacted by the people available, where this may need to include bought in expertise. Here we deal with making a process attainable.

Prevention, Amelioration, Cure

Traditional

Where one or more of the available people knows the process, the problem becomes one of skills transfer. See LackOfExpertise for the general case where skills transfer is required. A process is likely to be made up of techniques that are broadly similar to those used in other processes, so even in totally new processes there is likely to be some available expertise. Where a process is totally new to the team, it may be useful to have a prototype mini-project to test the process end to end, as described in MicroCosm. Where IterativeDevelopment is being used and the general skills levels are high, a similar effect can be achieved in the first delivery of a program of EarlyAndRegularDelivery.

Modern

Some of the modern Agile approaches have relatively fixed process; XP is an example of such an approach. Others adapt the process to the situation; of these Adaptive Software Development and Scrum are examples. In all cases, skills transfer is considered a high priority, and techniques such as DevelopingInPairs may be employed to achieve this efficiently. Where the process is required to adapt dynamically to the changing circumstances, having a workforce with broad individual skill sets, as found in GeneralizingSpecialists, is required to ensure the scope for adaptability is sufficiently broad.