A framing from Cagan's book Empowered: as organizations scale, they face two divergent paths — a process-driven path (adding process to substitute for judgment) or a coaching-driven path (building judgment directly into people through active coaching).
The process path is seductive because it feels like control and is procurable (frameworks, ceremonies, tools). The coaching path is slower and harder to buy, but it's the one that actually builds Product Sense at scale. A leader 'addicted to process' needs an external coach whose first job is disabusing them of the belief that process solves the underlying scaling problem — not adding a better process.
This is the mechanism behind why SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) fails to substitute for founder-style judgment, and it's a specific instance of the broader Context / Culture / Coaching Framework. See also External Coach as a 'Guiding Light' Through Transformation and Macro Climate Penalizes Intentional Process Design.
Cagan observes 'addiction to process' as a recurring organizational failure mode — more common in Europe, and more common among engineering leaders than product leaders — where a leader facing a scaling problem defaults to adding heavier process instead of investing in coaching. This is the process branch of the framework playing out as a systemic, almost cultural default rather than a one-off decision.
Apply: when a leader or org reaches for more process to fix a scaling problem, read it as a signal of a coaching gap (a hiring or experience gap) rather than a process gap, and treat repeated reach-for-process as a pattern to interrupt, not just a single bad call.
Из тем: The Product Operating Model