Process Development

• All business units have processes. Many, including IT in particular, do not have their processes documented.
  
  
• If processes are not documented, they are often not clearly understood and finding out what happened in an urgent situation may be very difficult.
  
  
• Documenting processes helps a business by clearly understanding "what should happen next" and "what happened before".
  
  
• This helps all line staff, particularily new hires, by ensuring that everyone understands their roles. This in turn helps to ensure that work is not "dropped" and, where there are problems, helps to trace to cause of the problem and speeds recovery.
  
  
• Dropped cases, files or other work clearly indicate a failure to execute a business plan. In some cases, there are financial penalities for these failures.
  
  
• Another benefit to process documentation is the case of the single person who is aware of "what should happen next". This obviously represents a threat to your ability to continue your business. Defining and documenting your processes can help reduce this dependency.
  
  
• The most persuasive reason for documenting IT processes is to tap into the expertise of your staff to improve the existing processes. Continuous process improvement is the hallmark of an business which is responsive to its client's and the market's changing requirements.
  
  
• The ITIL framework can help by organizing and maximizing these efforts and ensuring that nothing is missed.