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Best Practices For Process Documentation?
jollyreaper writes "I have a nice new IT job with a non-profit. They are a growing organization and management has realized that they need to bring their way of doing business up to a professional level. Several years back, their IT department was still operated like it was in a home office — fine when you're dealing with three people, not so good when there's over a hundred users. IT got its act together and is now running professionally and efficiently. The rest of the organization is a bit more chaotic and management wants to change that. One of the worst problems is a lack of process documentation. All knowledge is passed down via an oral tradition. Someone gets hit by a bus and that knowledge is lost forevermore. Now I know what I've seen in the past. There's the big-binder-of-crap-no-one-reads method, usually used in conjunction with nobody-updates-this-crap-so-it's-useless-anyway approach. I've been hearing good things about company wikis, and mixed reviews about Sharepoint and its intranet capabilities. And yes, I know that this is all a waste of time if there's no follow-through from management. But assuming that the required support is there, how do you guys do process documentation?"
(1) Avoid being hit by a bus.
(2) Refer to 1.
liqbase
You could come up with new ways, of course, but why rock the boat. Just go with the tried and true way of handling these things in American corporate culture; Mandate all employees must stay away from buses.
To accomplish this is quite simple:
1. Create new management positions and dept. to determine and create new compliance metrics for appropriate bus avoidance.
2. Create committee to determine and define best practices for avoiding buses.
3. Hire PR firm to create awareness of above policies and create slick training videos to introduce employees to anti-bus methodology.
4. Create HR sub-department in charge of enforcement and compliance to metrics with appropriate disciplinary board and/or retraining.
See. Simple. Problem solved.
My approach to documentation tends to be:
1. Put on to-do list
2. Procrastinate
3. There is no 3
Don't know if this qualifies as "best practice", though...
I think you work at the same place as me, except we're not a non-profit. Well, not intentionally.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've seen it where every process was documented - including those that were just common sense.
Did they really need a process to document how to arrange a meeting that had steps like "book a meeting room" and "invite participants to the meeting" plus a diagram showing the meeting with participants as an input.
I just imagine a guy sitting by himself in a meeting room wondering why he was all alone, checking the process manual and saying "Rats! I forgot step 37a - invite participants! At least I remembered step 62c so now all these cookies and all this coffee are just for me!"
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Clearly Mr. Semler hasn't had to face industry/government auditors....
Q: Show us your standard operating procedure for background checks
A: Hey look at this cartoon!!!
An outside expert, i.e. a consultant. That will surely freak out the staff. The good news is that there are a couple of guys named Bob available for a reasonable rate.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
For me too! I drive the bus that hits people who have kept crucial organizational knowledge to themselves.
It's a living.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.