Friday, March 18, 2011

Write when you find work

  
Where do you store your SOPs. You know, Standard Operating Procedures. Sales process, escalation procedures, workflows. In a knowledgebase, Wiki, Word Docs, or your head? I bet many of you have it in multiple places, started a Wiki, added some files to your Share Point Server, then added a couple of half-done text files to a shared folder. No I haven’t peeked in your network..

So what is the first rule of quality? Consistency. So if you want a quality output, you need a consistent process. Any way to document your processes is fine, so long as you do it the same way every time. But you do need to have written processes.

If you can’t write it down, you can’t do it, you can teach it, you can’t grow it. So, document everything you do and keep it updated. Date your documents and track your revisions. The only thing worse than missing documentation is incorrect documentation. If the process is missing someone might ask what it is, if it is just wrong they will follow it, and be wrong.



2 comments:

  1. I guess a PSA would come in handy here for tech businesses! Content management is a key, with a vast number of similarly titled documents it gets harder. I also use Xobni as a better mailbox search option.

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  2. So true Brian. I use Our Knowledge base for information others should know about.

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