A procedure somebody can actually follow SOP

Procedures fail in the writing, not in the doing

When a procedure is not followed, the investigation usually concludes that it was not followed. Read the document afterwards and you often find it could not have been: it did not say who, or it asked for two things and offered one tick, or it only covered the case where everything was normal.

There are four defects that account for most of it, and all four are obvious once somebody points at them.

• A step with no actor. “The form is checked”. By whom? Every reader assumes it is somebody else, and on the day it is nobody. This is the most common defect in written procedure and the easiest to fix: name a role in every step.
• A step that is two steps. “Check the identification and enter it on the system” is one number, two actions and one tick. Under pressure half gets done and the record says all of it did.
• A decision with one branch. “If the vehicle is insured, release it.” And if it is not? A procedure that answers only the expected case sends people to find somebody to ask, which is exactly what it existed to prevent, and the person they ask is improvising.
• Vague instruction. “Promptly”, “as appropriate”, “where necessary”, “if required”. Each of these moves a decision from the procedure to the person, silently, and two people reading it will do different things while both believing they complied.

So it reads the procedure back to you

You write the steps and the reader names the defects it can see, in the step where it sees them. It is pattern matching over the text, so it finds the mechanical faults (a passive step with no named role, an “and” joining two verbs, an if with no otherwise, the vague words), and it does not understand what your procedure is for.

That is the right division. Whether a step is correct is expertise and belongs to you. Whether a step can be followed by somebody who is tired, new, and holding the document for the first time is a property of the writing, and that is checkable.

Then test it on the person it is for

The test that finds what no reader can: hand it to somebody who does not already know the job and watch them try to follow it without asking questions. Every question they ask is a defect, and you write it down rather than answering it.

Write for the worst moment rather than the normal one. A procedure is read at three in the morning by somebody covering for a colleague, or during the incident it was written for. That is the reader to aim at: short steps, one action each, a named role, and the awkward branch answered on the page rather than left to be improvised.

Date it and say who owns it. An undated procedure with no owner is one nobody can update, so people work around it instead, and the document becomes a description of what used to happen. Nothing you type is uploaded. Nearby: CHECKLIST runs the list the procedure contains and keeps the proof it was run, PLAIN finds the sentence a reader stops at, and HANDOVER carries the unfinished parts to the next shift.