Every process has a cost. Setup and maintenance are easy to see. The cost to a team’s time and attention is easier to miss.

Three costs matter most to me.

Aggregate time

A process that takes 10% of a team’s week may be worth doing. Eight processes that each take 10% leave very little time for the team’s main work.

Each process can look reasonable in isolation while the combined system becomes absurd.

Mental overhead

Some tasks take only a few minutes but still require someone to remember them, prepare for them, and worry about missing them.

Enough small obligations can become more exhausting than one large task. The calendar may show open time while nobody has enough uninterrupted attention to use it.

Context switching

Each required meeting, report, check, and approval pulls someone away from their current problem. Returning to that problem also takes time.

This cost grows quickly when processes interrupt deep work.

Reducing the cost

  • Automate steps that do not require judgment.
  • Combine processes that use the same information.
  • Remove processes that no longer solve a clear problem.
  • Document the remaining processes so they require less private context.
  • Review the total cost instead of judging each process by itself.

Documentation is also a process, so have fun with that one.