Editable Standard Operating Procedures

If you want Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to be current, you need to make them easy to read, create and edit.

I hate it when these documents become outdated. That’s why I love to use wikis to create them. At Ombu Labs we currently use a Github Wiki to keep our Standard Operating Procedures up to date.

Next time you need to perform a repeatable task, you can ask someone else to follow the steps in the SOP.

The steps in the procedures have to be as clear as possible. If you need some sort of input, you need to specify it at the beginning of every step. If you expect the step to produce some output, you need to specify what it is.

In the footer of your Wiki, you can have a message for everyone who is reading it:

This is a Wiki, please edit this page if something is wrong or out of date. Keeping this up to date is a team effort.

I believe that is the only way to keep a SOP current. If you want to start delegating tasks, you need to have great documentation for all your processes.