How to write your first Standard Operating Procedure

: SOP Template | Procedure Template

A colleague in South America asked me this week to help “design and development standard operating procedures for training.”

I’ve done a lot of this over the years and even developed Standard Operating Procedure templates for Klariti Ltd.

Writing your first Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) can be a daunting task. Before I left for Japan I managed to get some words over to Carlos. Here’s a few ideas I had. What do you think I should add?

The first thing to do is prepare the Table of Contents, i.e. identify all the procedures that need to be written-up.

This involves lots of chasing people to determine what goes into the final document. I’d really stress this point as otherwise your doc may go off in the wrong tangent and what gets delivered wont please those who are responsible for signing it off.

Once you have that, agree on a common structure for all procedures. The templates are ideal for this. Just use the suggested layout / format.

Write up 2 or 3 first and get them out for review. After review, refine the SOPs and resend for more reviews. Keep this up until they (reviewers) are happy with the direction you’ve taken.

Then it just a matter of cranking out the SOPs.

… and prepare a schedule so you can keep track of where you are otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed. I use Excel. Keep it simple.

And send out status reports to your line managers. Always keep them in the loop.