Standard operating procedure template

This sizes a standard operating procedure before anyone writes it. Enter the steps, the roles that take part, the decision points, the tools or systems it references, the minutes a step takes to perform and to read, the people who must be trained on it and your review cycle, and the page returns the sections the SOP needs, the time to perform it and to read it end to end, the training minutes across everyone who must know it, the reviews per year and a rough length in words. An SOP is a document with numbers behind it; these are the numbers, from your own figures.

Seven sections, plus one for every decision

A working SOP carries a purpose, a scope, the roles, the materials or systems, the procedure itself, the records it produces and the review history. That is seven. Every decision point, if this then that, is a branch the reader has to be able to find, and the page adds a section for each one, because a decision buried in the middle of a step is the line that gets read two different ways by two different people.

Run time and read time are different numbers

A twelve-step procedure that takes forty-eight minutes to perform takes about eighteen minutes to read and understand, plus a minute for each role and each system the reader has to place. The page prints both, because the run time prices the procedure and the read time prices the training. A procedure whose read time approaches its run time is one that will be skimmed on the day.

Training minutes are the cost most SOPs never count

Six people reading an eighteen-minute procedure is close to two hours of the business, before anyone has done anything. The page multiplies the read time by the people who must be trained so the figure is visible when the SOP is being written, which is when it can still be shortened. The reviews per year at your cycle sit beside it, because every review is a re-read.