An SOP plan is the answer to four questions before any procedure is written: which tasks need one, in what order, at what cost, and at what pace. The operations manual template on this site counts the procedures a business has; the SOP development cost calculator prices the development and the training at your rates and prints the calendar weeks at your pace. This page is the plan those figures go into.
Which: the repeatable tasks that cost something
A task needs a procedure when doing it differently each time costs money or doing it wrong once costs more. Onboarding, month-end, fulfilment, complaints, opening and closing, batch release. A business of ten people usually finds twenty to forty once it counts, and the manual template counts them by department.
In what order: runs and failures
The procedure that runs most often and the one that has gone wrong most recently go first. Everything else is ordered by the same two figures. The plan is a list with a number beside each, not a wish.
At what cost: hours at your rates
Drafting, review and approval hours per procedure at the loaded rate, plus the training minutes across everyone who follows it, is a budget. The calculator prints it for the set, and the training is usually the larger half.
At what pace: what the team can keep
Two procedures a week alongside the real work finishes twelve in six weeks. The calculator divides the set by your honest pace so the plan's finish date is a figure, and so a fifty-procedure plan is recognised as a six-month one.
Questions people ask about sop plan
How many SOPs should be in the first plan?
The ten to fifteen that run most often or fail most expensively. Finish those, then plan the next set.
Who owns the SOP plan?
One person, usually the operations lead, with each procedure assigned to the person who runs its process.
Is there a free SOP plan template?
The operations manual template and the SOP development cost calculator on this site produce the counts and the budget free with no account; tracking each procedure through draft, review and approval is the paid product.