Process Debt: The silent drag on delivery (and how to pay it down in 90 days)

If your team is talented, busy, and still missing targets, you may be carrying process debt—the accumulated cost of unclear roles, undocumented handoffs, and “we do it this way because we always have” workflows. Like technical debt in software, process debt doesn’t shout; it quietly taxes every project with delays, rework, and inconsistent customer experiences.

What process debt looks like (in practice)

• Long lead times with mysterious pauses between steps
• Rework loops because “the output wasn’t what we needed”
• Key-person risk—only one person knows the drill
• Onboarding drag—new starters need shadowing to figure out “how we actually do it”
• Capacity blindness—no one can say where the bottleneck lives

You’re probably not doing anything “wrong.” You just haven’t codified how value flows—end‑to‑end—so people can run it consistently, measure it, and improve it.

A 90‑day pay‑down playbook

Days 1–30: Find it (Discovery & triage)

1. Pick three high‑impact journeys (e.g., Quote‑to‑Cash, Joiner‑Mover‑Leaver, Incident‑to‑Resolution).
2. Time‑box discovery: one 60–90 min workshop per journey with the people who actually do the work.
3. Capture the inputs → activities → outputs at a sensible level (4–7 stages). Note pain points as you go.
4. Score each pain point on customer impact, frequency, and fixability to create a short, ordered backlog.

Days 31–60: Fix it (Design for flow & ownership)

1. For the top 3–5 pains, design minimal‑change fixes first (clarify the upstream deliverable, move a decision earlier, merge handoffs).
2. Assign clear ownership for each map and each fix (process owner ≠ the busiest SME).
3. Standardise the essentials only:
   

   • Entry criteria (what “ready” looks like)
   • Definition of done (what “complete” means)
   • Handoffs (who gets what, in what format)
   • Metrics (below)

Days 61–90: Embed it (Make it visible & measurable)

1. Publish your flows where people work (SharePoint/BMS) with versioned updates and change notes.
2. Implement a five‑metric starter set that teams can collect without a new system:
   

   • Lead time (start → finish)
   • % first‑time‑right (no rework)
   • Handoff count (stages × risk)
   • Blocker time (waiting vs. working)
   • Defect escape rate (issues found downstream)

3. Run 15‑minute weekly huddles: review a single metric, validate one fix, queue the next small change.

Quick wins vs. foundational fixes

• Quick wins: clarify an input checklist, add a “ready” gate, merge duplicate approvals, templatise a frequent output.
• Foundational fixes: re‑sequence work to front‑load decisions, establish a shared queue, or change who owns a step.
  Use 80/20 thinking—let quick wins improve today’s work while one foundational fix removes tomorrow’s bottleneck.

Keep process debt low (without bureaucracy)

• One‑page process brief per flow (purpose, owner, inputs/outputs, SLAs, metrics).
• Quarterly “process tune‑up”: retire steps that no longer add value; re‑set SLAs to real‑world capacity.
• Lightweight governance: the process owner signs off changes; the team validates them in production for two weeks before “locking.”

The goal isn’t pretty diagrams. It’s predictable outcomes at lower effort—so your people can spend time on the work that actually moves the needle.

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Want help paying down process debt?
Book a no‑obligation 30‑minute Process Clinic to pick a target journey and leave with a first 90‑day plan. Or browse Examples of our work for inspiration. Examples of Our Work