I read a sad story about a guy who was working for a company with little to no software development process. He was wondering how to get management support to implement some level of process to the madness. Reddit readers gave him a good deal of interesting advice. I thought I would summarize some of the best responses here.This is the bottom line from the business. Management won’t change what already seems to work. If you are working a lot of overtime to make things work currently, you should stop. Then the problems will come to light. Hard core advisers would say you should even go as far as sabotaging the status quo to get your company to need some changes. I personally recommend against that. However the ends often justify the messy means.
You could also go ahead and demonstrate (not tell) the business case for process improvement. Tie the business case to money to be made by the company. Understand that your success in this arena may depend entirely on your attitude and personal skills to sell the process. Like most things, you should not try to change everything at once. Go incremental.
If you can convince your development peers of the need for the process change, then go ahead and do it. Show your peers how you can prevent disaster or pain for them. That will get their attention. I know it would get mine. You can also spin your ideas. Instead of software development process, you could call it a work flow process. That sounds more MBA.
I was disappointed to hear some veterans say they no longer care if there is no process. That is a bad sign. Fight the good fight. Try to get process improvement on your project. If you do not succeed, quit and join another organization. Then start again.
