Process cynicism is a (theoretical) measure of how much effort is spent in complying with the process as opposed to creating a great product or serving the customer. If you were able to measure how many hours you spend on these compliance activities and divide this by total effort, you would get a metric of cynicism.

Cynical activities are of two kinds: performing a process step that you know adds no value other than process compliance and creating evidence of your process execution for an audit. Evidence of process execution that is needed by management or other team members to ensure product quality is no cynicism, since it serves a business purpose other than satisfy the process guys.

Do we need to reduce cynicism to zero? Actually no. If you are working on an ISO 9000 or CMMI or similar environment you will need to do the Prove It step from SayWhatYouDoDoWhatYouSay, that is leave enough evidence of your processes so that an auditor or appraiser can check what you did. Maybe a 5% cynicism is acceptable if there are significant benefits of being certified. Over 20% cynicism is certainly a very bad idea. Alas, there is no reasonable way to actually measure cynicism to get reliable numbers, so please take my numbers with a grain of salt.

Note: This concept does not appear in books or publications. If you want more details, write to pablo.straub at gmail.com.