Do your approvals processes make it easier to do nothing than to do something?

Have you ever seen a project plan which is a victim of the approvals process?

You can usually tell when a plan has suffered in this way. There may be long gaps when nothing is happening, followed by frantic activity around a monthly or quarterly date. Or there may be design and planning work which is crammed into the plan far too early, in order to hit an approvals board. There may even be a whole part of the plan – and the team – dedicated to gathering data and writing requests for approval.

Technology people seem to hate approvals and love them at the same time. Nobody enjoys navigating their way through complicated and arcane processes where every signpost says, ‘Not this way,’ or ‘Try again.’ And yet we don’t seem to be able to stop ourselves from creating more processes: approvals to purchase, approvals to hire, approvals to release, approvals to change, and approvals to change the approvals process. I've certainly been guilty of implementing processes which seemed like a good idea at the time, but less so in practice.