Kevin Donaldson

Software is wonderful at creating economies of scale by automating processes that are time intensive, repetitive, costly, and error prone when done by humans.  However, a problem that can occur when you have access to software engineering resources is making automation the default first option when there is any problem with the business process.

Interestingly, process development challenges are very similar to product development challenges. Automating a bad process will likely make it faster, but won’t necessarily fix the bad process.  Though, you can create optimal results through rapid customer testing and refinement using lean principals to guide you.  Automation can and should be used as one of many options to reduce or eliminate bottlenecks but not necessarily as the first option.

At Balihoo or any startup, institutionalizing processes is a direct tradeoff to being lean. Startups begin with no processes and the goal of adding just enough process with growth to ensure great products and a stellar customer experience.  Add too much rigor to processes too early, and you can reduce a key competitive advantage - agility to react to the market.

In contrast, not adding enough rigor to processes can result in errors, employee wheel spinning, and inconsistent results, leading to unhappy customers.  Because growth is unpredictable, this balance is constantly changing and requires constant vigilance and involvement by all.  One bad event can cause knee jerk over-reactions by management that can cause massive downstream process effects if not checked.  Was that event isolated, or was it part of a bigger upstream problem?  How much process is required to solve this problem effectively?  Is this a process that we even want to continue supporting?

Balihoo management is vigilantly monitoring this balance.  Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don't. However, at all levels of the organization, we have built an ownership model that helps mitigate these types of risks which results in open discussion between process owners with questions like, “Hey we could do this better here? Maybe we shouldn't do this anymore?”
Key lessons we have learned are that:

• Total company buy-in is critical. 
• You don't have to be a process engineer to build a lean process. 
• Most of the time success happens as a result of a combination of common sense and an injection of ingenuity!  See these videos below for some great examples of human ingenuity with existing resources. :)