There's a stage in a team's growth where everything revolves around "getting the process in order." Something went wrong? We need a process. A misunderstanding? Let's define the workflow better. Misalignment? Checklist, ritual, documentation. It makes sense: when chaos is everywhere, process brings order, gives you a common language, reduces mistakes, distributes the work.
And for a while, it definitely works. It frees you from deciding everything from scratch and gives you a sense of security. It makes visible and accessible what used to live only in a few people's heads.
But if you're not paying attention to how that process ages, if no one's asking which parts are still alive and which are just running on autopilot, the process starts taking up space it shouldn't. It stops helping you think and starts thinking for you.
Sometimes you don't even notice the drift. What you feel is something else: slowness, apathy, meetings that happen just because "they're supposed to." Templates that get filled out but no one reads, decisions that arrive too late. Initiatives executed with precision, but without enthusiasm.
All of that is a logical consequence: if the system doesn't reward clarity or autonomy, the safest path is the one that's already drawn. Follow the steps. Do what's expected: check, check, check.
For a long time, I believed that thinking in terms of process was the most important thing. But now I'm starting to see that some problems can't be solved with workflows. That some things don't get better by adding more steps. And that sometimes, what's slowing you down isn't the lack of process—it's following them to the letter.
On top of that, AI didn't just bring new tools. It brought a different pace: where you used to need weeks of work to have something to show, now you can build a POC in minutes. And with that, the kinds of decisions worth delaying have changed.
We're no longer always starting from the problem. A lot of the time we're starting from a solution that didn't exist three months ago and asking ourselves what it might be good for. The research comes after. Validation, too. First you explore. You play. And only then do you start figuring out what's actually worth building.
The traditional process, designed to reduce risk before touching a single line of code, was built for a different world. Today, the risk might be something else entirely: moving too slowly. Spending so long "aligning" that you run out of new questions. Out of momentum. Out of agency.
So, what do we do?
I'd answer the same way I answer 90% of the questions I ask myself lately: no idea. But for me, you shouldn't be afraid to challenge them. Even if they took a lot of effort to build. Even if they're comfortable. Even if they're documented in Confluence with 78 links.
Let's try skipping a step. Starting from the end. Spending less time overthinking and more time playing. Making room for instinct, curiosity, and the kind of mistakes that teach faster than any daily standup.
I'm not saying we should live in chaos. I'm saying we need to make sure the structure isn't draining the life out of our teams. That we're not leaving innovation outside just to avoid making anyone uncomfortable. That we're not killing ideas because they don't fit neatly into the flow.
If there was ever a good time to question how we do things, it's now.