Definition:
A brittle process is a business or IT process that is stable and works well providing nothing changes, with an overtone that any changes that come might not be predictable 1.
Explanation:
This is a relatively new term and comes due to many companies having a lot of different systems integrating with each other in a long chain of dependencies. A brittle process might be strong, it might be stable, but its a process that if you change it in one place it breaks everywhere. This might be down to items being read off one system being very very dependent on a specific structure, or one system has poor quality code, or they might not be able to adapt to different structures, It might even be down to very strict timings. For example, if you have timed jobs that run a certain time every single day, and their receiving jobs depend on that timing. If you change the timing in any way, you can break the whole process. With modern systems that have processes that feed off other processes which in turn feed of even more processes, it becomes harder to identify and harder to document as people make assumptions with everything they do, and don’t realise that their systems are now critical to items further down the line. To try and get around this, insure end to end transparency. A good change control system with robust communication, and decent quality documentation. Also, code reviews help.
Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.
- I have been told that his comes from the book Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Tale[↩]