Kate Heddleston makes some great points in The Null Process:

When people say they don’t want process, what they’re really saying is they don’t want formalized process. There is really no such thing as “no process.” A process is simply the steps it takes to complete a task, so if a task is completed then by definition a process was used. Without formalized process everyone does things their own way, and there is no documentation for how problems are solved. This informal, undocumented process is the “null process,” and, if used incorrectly, the null process can have major implications for a company.

This reminds me of two things. The first is Rebekah Cox’s definition of Product Design:

Design is a set of decisions about a product. It’s not an interface or an aesthetic, it’s not a brand or a color. Design is the actual decisions.

What this implies is that everything you do in product design has a consequence. So just “letting things happen” is also a decision. It’s just a pretty bad one. Maybe that should be called “null design.” I don’t know, I’m not good at naming things¹.

The second is Michael Lopp’s The Process Myth. The whole thing is great, but this quote in particular has always stuck in my mind:

Engineers don’t hate process. They hate process that can’t defend itself.

Also this advice:

Healthy process is awesome if it not only documents what we care about, but is willing to defend itself. It is required to stand up to scrutiny and when a process fails to do so, it must change.

For more reading on what it takes to build good processes (because let’s be honest, what else are you going to do on a Friday night?), I recommend Adam Wuerl’s Avoiding Process Hell and Jeff Gothelf’s Applying Product Thinking to Process Improvement.