“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?)” – Decimus Junius Juvenalis (Juvenal), Roman satiric poet

We’ve spoken before about the importance of meeting high standards with your work.

We’ve also covered, in detail, how failure to comply with industry standards and bad processes cost Zenefits $7,000,000.

This all happened because they weren’t meeting the standards they should have been with their internal processes.

To help stop you from falling afoul of the same fate, we here at Process Street will be covering compliance audits in this post. These are the guidelines that you will need to follow to avoid penalties from external sources for not doing your work satisfactorily.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in – compliance audits are there to make sure that your customers are getting a satisfactory (or, at least reasonable) service.

We’ll cover:

• What is a compliance audit?
• Why is audit compliance important?
• Compliance audit types
• How to prepare for a compliance audit
• Process Street: The natural compliance audit software

Let’s get right into it.

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You’ll often hear the question: “Which is better? Kanban or Scrum?” or variations of this eternal deathmatch between two of the most well-established agile methodologies.

People are wasting energy fighting over which methodology trumps another. If you’re an agile organization, you should be placing principle above practice.

It makes a lot of sense to ask questions like “why might I want to use Kanban over Scrum?”, or even “Kanban and Scrum” as opposed to “Kanban vs Scrum”. There are a lot of differences between the two, but fundamentally, they are both agile methodologies, and the principle behind why you might want to use both can be in alignment.

You may even find they can work well together, as part of a unified strategy referred to as Scrumban. You need to consider what approach will work best for your team.

My aim with this article is to approach the question of “Kanban vs Scrum” by clearly presenting both approaches in terms of when, how, and why you might choose to use either of them.

I’ll also talk about the capacity for overlapping Kanban and Scrum approaches, and how some additional tools like Process Street can factor into that equation.

Here’s a breakdown of how we’ll approach comparing “Kanban vs Scrum”:

• What makes a team agile?
• What is Kanban?
• What is Scrum?
• Kanban vs Scrum: Differences
• Kanban vs Scrum: Similarities
• What is Kanban good for?
• When to use Kanban
• Kanban process
• What is Scrum good for?
• When to use Scrum
• Scrum process
• Using BPM for agility

Let’s start with a basic primer on what it means to be agile. Continue Reading

What are audit procedures? Can you define the term with a single definition?

How are audit procedures relevant to your business?

How would you go about implementing audit procedures?

I will stop with the interrogation. I hope though, I have you thinking – I mean really thinking – about the term audit procedure. From my own experience, most people hear the term audit and have a general idea of what this is. But when it comes to defining the term or implementing audit procedures in a business, they struggle.

If you are one of those people, then luck is in your favor for having stumbled on this article. In this article, we at Process Street will take a look at audit procedures, define what they are and how they are implemented.
We then turn our attention to a specific type of audit procedure, namely, the internal audit. Finally, I will introduce to you Process Street’s new, game-changing feature: approvals.

This article is structured as below:

• Audit procedures: What are they?
• Audit procedures: The auditing process
• Audit procedures: Four different types of auditing opinion
• Internal audit: What is an internal audit
• Internal audit: The benefits internal audits bring to your business
• Internal audit: Disasters caused by internal audit neglect
• How you can use Process Street to conduct an internal audit for your business
• Process Street’s approvals feature and its use-value for internal audits
• A whistle-stop tour through Process Street’s free internal audit template resources

In the section A whistle-stop tour through Process Street’s free internal audit templates, you are presented with 19 free templates. I have listed these templates below so that you can plunge right in. Keep reading for more information on each template.

1. Financial Audit Checklist
2. Environmental Accounting Internal Audit
3. Environmental Management Self Audit Checklist
4. Management Systems Audit Checklist
5. ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 Integrated Management System (IMS) Checklist
6. ISO 9001:2015 Internal Audit Checklist for Quality Management Systems
7. PPC Audit Checklist
8. Google Analytics Audit
9. Technical SEO Audit
10. UX Audit
11. ISO 27001 Information Security Management System (ISO27K ISMS) Audit Checklist
12. SQL Server Audit Checklist
13. Firewall Audit Checklist
14. Network SecurityAudit Checklist
15. Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Audit Checklist
16. Diversity Management Monthly Audit
17. Hotel Sustainability Audit
18. Laboratory Safety Procedure Audit
19. Retail Store Audit Checklist

Shall we get started?
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Only 23% of surveyed CEOs believe that they have comprehensive information about the risks of their business.

Can you confidently state that you belong in that 23%?

Even if you are not a CEO, as an employee, are you sure you know all the risks within your workplace?

If not, then keep reading.

In this article, you will learn about risk and how to manage it, specifically via risk mitigation. You are also provided with a thorough list of Process Street resources and templates. These are designed for you to gain a good understanding of business risk, risk management and risk mitigation.

This article is structured as below:

• A definition of risk
• What is risk management
• What is risk mitigation
• Risk mitigation application
• Risk mitigation and risk management: A broader picture

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Services, services, services.

We seem to be in a world of managed services.

Everyone’s outsourcing nowadays. And when they’re not outsourcing, they’re insourcing in an outsourced way.

It’s all very confusing.

That’s why we’ve decided to break down the core document which tends to regulate and organize this kind of service provision: the humble service-level agreement (SLA).

Service-level agreements, amongst other things, bolster trust in and between organizations – making it clear what needs to be done, to what standard, and when.

Trust is a hugely important thing in business. Accenture’s Competitive Agility Index found:

following a drop in trust, a company’s index score drops 2 points on average, negatively impacting revenue growth by 6% and EBITDA by 10% on average.

One of the main ways to keep trust alive in your business is to know what is expected of people and to hold them to it. Enforce reliability.

SLAs are one mechanism to help you in that battle.

In this Process Street article we’ll answer the following questions:

• Free SLM and SLA templates
• What is a service-level agreement (SLA)?
• Why do you need a service-level agreement?
• What are the different types of SLA?
• What is in a service-level agreement?
• What kinds of companies use an SLA?
• What are some SLA examples?
• What are the alternatives to SLAs?
• How you can use SLAs with Process Street

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From humble beginnings as a simple clone of the then-popular first-person shooter Quake, Half-Life would eventually become the first installment of one of the most successful video game series of all time.

Today, Valve Inc. is one of the most renowned, innovative, and successful game development companies worldwide, boasting one of the largest video game digital distribution service platforms on the planet, a range of pioneering virtual reality hardware and an impressive roster of instantly recognizable and widely-loved game titles.

Specifically, the development of the original Half-Life makes for an interesting case-study, and represents a model of innovative agile organizational management.

Half-Life is remembered as one of the best games of all time, and the intense environment in which it was created – where the Cabal process was born – is testament to that legacy.

Companies like Valve, Zappos, Semco, and even Google have come up with different models to enable the potential of their workers. These methods give power to the employees to pursue their own entrepreneurial pet projects.

Tesla’s innovation is equal part production process as it is the product; you need only look to the hulking Gigafactories to find evidence of this.

Similarly, Facebook’s success is not just in the service it offers users, but also how it was designed to scale to billions of users.

The process of organizational management is always an important factor in the outcome of these hugely successful products.

In this post I’ll be looking at democratic methods of organizational management, with a particular focus on Valve’s Cabal process. I’ll also mention a couple of other interesting examples of holocratic organizational management, and talk about our own internal structure at Process Street.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each section, if you want to jump ahead:

• What is organizational management?
• Valve’s Cabal game design process
• Zappo’s holocratic organizational management system
• Semco’s organizational management success story
• How digital democracy plays a role in organizational management
• Process Street’s organizational management structure

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It was my first time visiting Sweden, and somehow I found myself hauling two baskets of milk containers to deliver to the local supermarket. Feeling like a recycling heroine, my ego was soon deflated when I realized my efforts were something of commonality in this country.

Recycling is part of the Swedish supermarket’s environmental management strategy and has contributed to the country’s 99% recycling rate. It is results such as these that make Sweden one of the most environmentally friendly countries in the world.

In fact, many Swedish corporations place the present and prevailing problems facing our environment on a pedestal. Why?

If you read my last post on business sustainability, you will understand how the environment impacts our economy. It is due to this deep-seated connection between economies and ecosystems that make environmental management so important.

Environmental management acts to safeguard nature from potentially damaging business operations, constructing a win-win situation benefitting the economy and the environment.

In this article, we at Process Street explain exactly what environmental management is, why it is needed, and how you can implement environmental management into your business today. We also have a bunch of free templates to help you apply environmental management strategies.

Let’s crack on and find out exactly what environmental management is.

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Sometimes the full range of process management features can be overwhelming.

We here at Process Street know that we can’t please everyone. However, if you’re going to use a Process Street alternative, we’d rather tell you about them from our own accounts than throw a bunch of marketing at you.

That’s why we’re covering some common Process Street alternatives in today’s post.

To skip to a particular section, use the links below:

• Process Street (for context)
• Process Street alternatives
  • Office 365 (Microsoft Word)
  • Google Suite (Google Docs)
  • Airtable
  • Trello
  • Asana
  • LucidChart
• What’s your choice?

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We analyze and manage risks every day.

From crossing the street, correctly preparing food, fastening seat belts, to coordinating a journey via public transit. Each of these is an example of a risk management process happening in our heads; sometimes the result of “common sense”, sometimes these decisions are made unconsciously.

When it comes to business management, a more rigorous, formalized approach is needed.

One such strategy for managing risk is to utilize standards for risk management, like ISO 31000. This approach is useful in pretty much any situation, for organizations of all shapes and sizes, to manage risk in their everyday operations.

Managing risk effectively is essential to ensure businesses succeed and thrive in an environment of constant uncertainty. This post covers everything you need to know about ISO 31000; here’s a quick rundown of the article structure:

• What is ISO 31000?
• Benefits of ISO 31000
• Principles of ISO 31000
• ISO 31000 framework
• ISO 31000 process
• Importance of risk management leadership
• ISO 31000 and continuous improvement
• Automating ISO 31000

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If you want to grow your business, you need to know how to allocate your resources to make it happen. How do you figure out the steps you need to take, or the processes you need to implement to make it happen?

You conduct a gap analysis.

Simply put, the gap analysis is a tool designed to help you understand where you are, and what you need to do in order to get to where you want to be.

In this article, I’ll be breaking down the basics and running through a process for getting started with performing your first gap analysis.

Here’s what this Process Street article has in store:

• What is a gap analysis? In simple terms
• What’s the use of a gap analysis
• Benefits of gap analysis
• Common gap analysis examples
• Different types of gap analysis
• The gap analysis process
• Gap analysis tools
• How to streamline the gap analysis process

Let’s get started.

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