Best Practices For Process Documentation? 370
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?"
Operational manual (Score:5, Funny)
(1) Avoid being hit by a bus.
(2) Refer to 1.
I say go the traditional route. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Operational manual (Score:4, Funny)
My approach (Score:5, Funny)
1. Put on to-do list
2. Procrastinate
3. There is no 3
Don't know if this qualifies as "best practice", though...
Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My approach (Score:5, Funny)
Documetn the useful processes (Score:4, Funny)
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!"
Re:More documentation may not be the answer. (Score:2, Funny)
Q: Show us your standard operating procedure for background checks
A: Hey look at this cartoon!!!
Re:Tough project (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Critical Tasks (Score:5, Funny)
For me too! I drive the bus that hits people who have kept crucial organizational knowledge to themselves.
It's a living.