Process documentation template

This costs a set of process documentation and shows when it pays for itself. Enter the processes to document, the average steps in each, the hours to write and review one, the author's and the reviewer's loaded rates, how many times the processes run each month and the minutes each run saves once it is documented, and the page returns the hours to write and review the set, what that costs, the hours saved every month, their value at the author's rate, the months to payback and the pages the finished set will run to. Documentation is an investment with a return; this is the return, from your own figures.

The cost is the hours, at the rates of the people who do it

Eight processes at three hours of writing and an hour of review is thirty-two hours, and at your author's and reviewer's rates that is a figure the business can see. Most documentation projects are never costed, which is why they are never finished: the hours are borrowed from other work and nobody knows when the borrowing ends. The page prints the hours and the cost so the project is a decision rather than a drift.

The return is minutes per run, times runs

Six minutes saved on a process that runs a hundred and twenty times a month is twelve hours a month, and at the author's rate that is the return. The page keeps the saved minutes as your own estimate rather than supplying one, because the honest number differs enormously between a process that is currently improvised and one that is merely undocumented.

Payback in months is the number that orders the work

The cost divided by the monthly value is the payback, and the page prints it in months. A set that pays back in two months should be written this quarter; one that pays back in three years should be a single page or not written at all. Run the tool once per candidate process and the order of work falls out of the payback column.