A procedure is like a recipe.  But someone has to write the recipe first.  So what is a good recipe for writing procedures?

Writing a good procedure is an iterative process.  The basic steps include developing a process map, drafting the procedure, drafting supporting documents (e.g. forms, job descriptions), testing the documented procedure with the real users, and then continuously updating your process map, procedure, and supporting documents in a PDCA cycle of continual improvement.

A lot of procedures don’t work.  Making a good procedure is about overcoming the top ten reasons why policies and procedures don’t work in the first place.  How do you make a good procedure good?  Good procedures have ten important characteristics.

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NEW Aerospace AS9100 Procedures Can Help

The International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) deadline for transitioning from the current AS9100 (revision B) of the aerospace standard to the newest revision (C) is July 1st, 2012, which means every company registered to AS9100 must have completed their transition.

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You’ve just been given the task of writing a new procedure that documents an existing business process.  You make sure you understand, and you close with, “I’ll get on this process right away.”

That’s when your boss says, “Process? Did I say ‘process’? I meant processezzz! Plural!”  And before you can blurt out, “What do you mean?”, the boss says you need to develop procedures for all accounting processes, not just the one.  Oh, and he wants them by the end of the month!

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Writing procedures is an exercise in controlling the cost of compliance.  You’re trying to comply with customer expectations, management objectives, government regulations, and/or industry standards, making compliance expensive.  Regardless of the reason for compliance, wouldn’t you want to write as few procedures as possible if you could still conform to the compliance mandate and keep your compliance costs to a minimum?

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You’ve written a new procedure.  Your procedure review identified completeness, correctness, and subject matter applicability.  You feel you’ve caught your procedure writing errors and the procedure’s ready to go…but go where?  How do you determine if your new procedure is working?

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Not all processes require procedure writing.  There’s a lot of overhead associated with every business procedure you write.  Therefore, the more business procedures you write, the more procedures you have to edit, implement, train, audit, and

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Your process is not living up to expectations, so you’ve decided to implement standard operating procedures (SOP) to improve process consistency, compliance, and effectiveness.  However, that project is stalled: employees are not buying into your proposed changes, and management is growing impatient.

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Business and organizational development is about business process change: not as in “process change – the event”, but “process change – the journey“.  Your business processes change in response to market forces, competition, regulations, customer demand, the economy, culture, personal beliefs, and many other factors.  The question isn’t about what is causing the business process changes — we know your business processes are going to change — the question is…

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Over the last four weeks, we have focused our discussion on process maps. We’ve tried to answer some of the most common questions about process maps by taking a look at seven different types of process maps and how they’re used to describe processes.  A process is a structured set of activities that transforms inputs into outputs, but the way we describe a process may vary dramatically, from a text-based procedure to different forms of process maps.

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Hard-bound books in the ready-to-use procedure series provide concrete examples of prewritten policies and procedures for a wide variety of business and organizations.

St. Louis, MO — November 24, 2008 — Bizmanualz, Inc., a business publications, training and consulting company based in St. Louis, MO, today announced the release of a new series of hard-back books covering topics like Finance, Accounting, Computer & IT, Sales & Marketing and HR.

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