Business Success with Open Source

Why We Need Policies and Procedures

Policies and procedures surround us, whether we acknowledge them or not. We need to get stuff done and, being the clever apes we are, will come up with a method to do that (even if we make up the method as we go along). This method is a procedure: when the light bulb burns out, I turn off the light switch, twist the bulb to the left, remove it, put a new one in its place, twist to the right, and turn the switch back on—and I’m rewarded with light. We also develop a rubric or protocol for when it’s appropriate to apply that procedure. This rubric is a policy: when the light bulb burns out, I don’t replace it if the power switch is still on, especially if I’m standing in a puddle of water.

As you see in the ...