How To Write A Process Document: Process Documentation Guide

This is the stage where you consult with key stakeholders about the content that should go into your documentation. It’s time to spill the beans and explain the steps that go into documenting workflows for your business processes. Focus on being specific – use terminology which is suited to your business organisation. If you want employees to look forward to reading your process documents, don’t stick to big blocks of text alone. Use visual elements like images, videos, and GIFs to make your process documentation compelling.

You’ll want to keep your steps as simple as possible and focus on only capturing key parts of the process. Creating a detailed document can align teamwork around process objectives and encourage organizational clarity. As a team leader, you have the opportunity to define which fields and functions best fit your team—from identifying process boundaries to documenting process steps. Have documents stored online in a central location via a process documentation tool.

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You can centralize tasks, speed up learning curves and ensure everyone is on the same page. So, use checklists to ensure things are working as planned. Take team feedback, identify new issues and correct everything. Follow these, and you’ll have your process flows captured in the most efficient way possible. Develop and distribute a process documentation guide as a reference tool and template for anyone documenting a new process or revising an existing one.

Breaking down a process into individual steps helps you establish its current state. From there, you canidentify bottlenecksand take steps to address them. This could mean using automation tools or removing certain steps altogether. Make them easy to edit and search—processes undergo continual change, and new feedback should always be incorporated to improve effectiveness.

IT Service Management

Building a workflow process document is pretty simple and straightforward if you know the right steps. Additionally, employee feedback will bring to spotlight the problems existing in your current process workflows. With such crucial knowledge at your disposal, you will be better positioned to fine-tune the workflows and bring the necessary changes to your documentation.

This is why you need one centralized location for storing all your process documentation. If you want employees to follow the new protocols, you need to make them easy to access — preferably from any device. Now, it’s time to start gathering information about the process. Just make sure to let employees know that you’re not monitoring them on their work performance — instead, they are helping the company to improve. Process documentation captures and communicates these processes, ensuring that organizations can scale efficiently while maintaining quality and reducing errors.

What is Business Process Documentation?

For new employees, process documentation makes onboarding easier . Because as they’re learning the how-tos and need-to-knows, they have clear directions each step of the way. That way, they’re confident that they’re getting the hang of their new role. Your process documents can be a standard operating procedure, a checklist, a video tutorial, or anything else that teaches someone how to do the task. The key is to make sure that anyone can look at the documentation and do the task. Step-by-step instructions are the foundation of many process documents.

They don’t just rely on memory, and no step is considered too minute. I’m new to process maps and want to learn more.I want to make my own process map in Lucidchart. Finally, you must know when the process is completed by familiarizing yourself with the signs that indicate so. All these boundaries must be well-defined and set way before the entire process starts. In this step, you indicate the point where this process is applied and where it stops, otherwise known as process boundaries. By setting your limitations, you also define the factor that will trigger it.

• If you update a process, make sure that everyone has the latest version.
• This evolution resulted in task orientation, which is explaining information sequentially, such as how-to’s or tutorials.
• Especially in remote work, it’s a roadblock to fruitful teamwork.
• As organizations and projects scale, individual roles—and the knowledge that goes with them—become more siloed.

The main difference between the two is each system’s layout. Process documentation focuses on creating a written document outlining key details, while process mapping focuses on visualizing the process. And while process documentation does include a visual representation, it’s quite different from the in-depth visual of a process map. If you have not had great experiences with process documentation, you will love HEFLO. You can draw diagrams inspired by our ready made business process documentation and diagram library, designed respecting the best practices of BPMN 2.0. With over 20 options to choose from for process documentation, you now have the perfect tools for the right job.

Process Documentation: Definition & Best Practices

That’s why we recommend storing process documentation in Confluence through the Master project documentation template or other project management templates. Its features also make your documentation easy to find and to update. Take your process documentation one step further with workflow management software that helps teams streamline processes. You can also create process documentation to streamline current processes.

Running a calculation through the process helps to understand the process that was created. Is it correct that it takes us three weeks to complete a request for service and that we spend four/five hours actually doing the work during that time, or did we miss something? When improvements are made it is nice to be able to calculate the impact and to report that to management. If you’re looking to create or even update your business processes, check out our guide below to help you make your operations more efficient and cost-effective. We’ve shared everything you need to create new process documents or improve existing ones.

• Clearly outline the roles and responsibilities of individuals involved in the process.
• Design, run, report, and improve your business processes.
• You can leverage this template to visualize multi-phased processes or projects like promotions, customer onboarding, product launches and activations.
• Meaning, you’ll need to benchmark the new process to the KPIs and if something goes wrong, roll back to the older process.
• That’s why it’s a good idea to review and test the process a couple of times.

For instance, your customer service guidelines might clearly state information reps must not reveal during a customer service call to avoid breaching privacy rules. These documents should be available to employees in a central location, such as an internal knowledge base, so they can be easily found and referenced when needed. Once the process has been tested and refined, share the documentation with the relevant team members and stakeholders.

Establishing the process perimeter helps create clear guidelines for task allocation when implementing the new process. For instance, if the goal is to reduce manual tasks through automation, the perimeter might involve the IT team initiating the process and the operations team executing it. Once you’re able to reach the goal of the procedure document and replicate the process multiple times, it’s time to ship it and start sharing it with your team. Once you have the band all together, you can start collecting every bit of information needed to complete the process.

How to Write Process Documentation

It can also be quite impactful to incorporate screenshots or screen recordings at various points as you document the steps in a process. This helps give employees confidence and lets them know you are setting them up for success. That is an excellent combination for increasing employee satisfaction.

If you don’t document a process, essentially it is being re-designed by someone every time it is repeated. When an employee leaves, any process knowledge leaves with them unless it has been properly recorded. As automation is already common in the majority of companies, such process documents will serve as your basis whenever you implement any change within the organization. Business process documentation plays an essential role in your business because it serves as the blueprint of your daily operations.

Many how to calculate stockholders equitys, individual processes overlap across departments. HR might be using a document with the goal of onboarding, the team lead will be using it for training, and IT; for maintenance. Documenting business processes sounds like a daunting task. We have gone through the process ourselves to get our entire team in sync. Ensure process documentation is readily accessible for all stakeholders.

All these steps will lead you to accurately create process documentation for your organization. It will help increase your team’s efficiency and productivity by making sure that it is created seamlessly and that they are well oriented on what it is like. It is also essential to make sure that the document is concise and straightforward, so all of the members of the team can easily follow it. This process documentation guide covers everything you need to know to document a process properly. Follow the process documentation steps we have discussed above, and make use of the process flowchart templates to ensure a quality documentation process.