Almost no discussion on managing processes is complete without the use of the word “tailoring”. It is one of those words that although is understood commonly at a generic level starts giving trouble when applied without enough explanation in process development scenarios. I will attempt to describe how I understand “tailoring” in context of process models. I will provide this explanation using a practical scenario of applying a process in real projects.

A process is of little use unless it is expected to add value resulting in successful delivery of real life projects. Every endeavour or project, be it a software project, science experiment or manufacturing an article of clothing, has a certain process it follows. For us in the knowledge intensive domain of software development, successful project delivery is made tougher due to changing or late arising requirements coupled with involvement of skilled knowledge workers. My earlier post talks a bit more on these challenges. Over time, an organization would accumulate a large number of lessons learned as well as patterns and practices that work consistently well across projects. They will also have a collection of anti-processes (think anti-patterns) which they know don’t work. Some organizations would use a tool such as IRIS Process Author to structure their body of process knowledge for easy reuse.

Let us now add a temporal element relating to a point of time when an expected endeavour/project becomes known. At this time, you would study the characteristics of the known execution environment and try to modify your existing body of process knowledge to come up with a process model that best suits this expected project environment. As much as you can, you would also account for the known unknowns in your process model. Based on different situations, this would mean defining things like - a set of activities and their work breakdown structure or workflow, a set of work products that are created and or consumed in the process, the process roles that are staffed by practioners, the pre-post conditions that might be true within the process and so on. You may also defined the narrative guidance that would be read by the practioners in the project. This tailoring of the available process body of knowledge will result in bespoke processes suitable for a specific project execution environment. This process model would best describe the process framework that is expected to result in a successful execution of the project.

Now we will add the second temporal element relating to a point of time when the project is initiated. At this time you would use the tailored process to create instances of process definition elements as project work items. For example this would mean a project manager creating instances of a change control workflow as and when a change work item is added. I would call this instantiation of process definition as flexible process enactment. Keep in mind that the project manager can also add additional work items that are not defined in the process model. However, these changes to the process model could not have been anticipated as the time of process tailoring before the project is initiated. Some would argue that even this flexible process enactment is a “tailoring” of sorts since the process is being instantiated based on the unfolding project (and in some cases new work items are added to the process model). Personally, I have no problems with that as long as there is clarity on the context – tailoring before project initiation and tailoring after project initiation - is understood.

The key point I want to underline is that you would not leave process tailoring to be done after the project has started. Rather you would attempt to tailor your process, using the lessons learned from the past and the known unknowns of the project, before the project is initiated. Once the project starts you would flexibly instantiate your process elements as project work items driven by the circumstances of the unfolding project. Off course you will also add the unknown unknowns to your process. However these by their very definition would not have been known before project startup so could not have been modeled ahead of time.

Last 5 posts by Kamal Ahluwalia

• Is my process true to my methodology of choice? - January 7th, 2008
• EPF – Failing grade on collaboration - January 2nd, 2008
• Governance Webinar Recording - December 7th, 2007
• Webinar - Effective Software Development Governance - November 28th, 2007
• IRIS Process Central is here... - November 19th, 2007

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Processes & Methodologies, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.