The Process Problem
Posted on Wed, Jul 20, 2011
By ASG's Professional Services Group, ASG
Your organization runs by the processes that are developed by security executives/managers like you. Some of them are cultural (this is the way we always do things) and some of them may be documented in writing and stored. Hopefully they are stored somewhere easily accessible by the people who are involved with those processes such as a SharePoint site or a pre-defined location in your corporate database.
Your standard operating procedures (SOP) are dictated by these processes. Without SOP guidelines anchored by core processes and metrics, you are hoping for results, not proactively managing to them.
Do you have standard processes? Are they in writing? Where do you store them?
I am going to guess you fall into one four categories:
1. We have processes, but they aren’t documented
2. We have processes but manage them poorly or inefficiently
3. We have processes, follow them, measure them, but are always looking to improve
4. And finally: processes what are those?
Taking this part of your business to the next level is absolutely critical to its success. You should be able to accurately identify your processes, where they are stored and also how your company goes about creating new ones and changing old ones.
We will be discussing how one client of our thinks about process design, management and metrics. In particular, how they have embraced the idea of processes and taken them from a good idea to something formalized, documented and actionable.
If you would like to examine how your company handles processes, please send us your ideas, suggestions or war stories and we will share them with our panel of experts.
Process Questions:
1. Can you name a few areas where you have created a process to manage a portion of your team?
2. How do you create processes and modify old ones? Describe that process, if any.
3. What benefits do you see from strict process control?
4. Where do you store your process data sheets?
5. How do you measure if a process is valuable?