The Importance of Process

When agile works well, developers and product owners all have a sense of direction, scope and a good enough estimation for how long projects will take to be delivered. It is certainly easy to take this for granted when it works but it's also incredibly easy to slip into ignoring the process and just doing "one more" bug.

What do I mean by process? I'm specifically talking about going through the motions of having ticketed work written, refined, estimated, and planned properly within sprints. There are plenty of slight variations with these processes and so the exact choices will heavily depend on the people and environment.

When the process does not work, it means that developers are not protected, it is very easy for them to be shafted with a lot more work than capacity allows, increasing stress and reducing mental health for all.

I have honestly never given much credit to this side of development but I absolutely understand the value now as without some form of structure and process, it's just the wild west out there.

On the other hand, having too much process will then mean that nothing will ever get delivered. It's all about finding the right balance of process to allow developers to do their work and deliver with as best estimate they can give.