Sanitized recreation Systems Setup and Cleanup
Process documentation
SOP Development and Operations Playbook
Most SOPs fail because nobody can find them, or because they describe a process nobody follows. This recreation designs the library before writing a single SOP: categories, naming, owners, one template and a review date for every document. Each SOP covers purpose, trigger, owner, roles, steps, quality checks, escalation and templates.
Cedar & Main Consulting (fictional) · Illustrative data. A fictional company and fictional data, built to show the same type of work Kelly has really done.
The scenario
- A 22-person advisory firm that doubled in two years (illustrative).
- Only one person knows how month-end billing works.
- New hires learn by shadowing whoever is free. System access is granted piecemeal.
- Client onboarding steps live in three people’s inboxes.
- A shared folder called “Processes” holds dozens of outdated, duplicated or half-finished documents (illustrative).
The ask: “I want this place to run the same way whether or not specific people are in the room.”
The approach
- Architecture before writing: categories, naming, one template, an owner and a review date.
- Prioritize processes that touch money, clients or compliance, or that happen weekly.
- Write from the work, not the ideal, using a recent real example with the person who does it.
- Build in quality checks and an escalation path.
- Pick the right format: steps, swimlanes or checklists.
- Put the library where people already work, then train.
Deliverables
- Process inventory and prioritization
- SOP library architecture and naming convention
- Standard SOP template
- Five complete SOPs: client onboarding, employee onboarding, vendor onboarding, invoice approval, monthly billing
- Supporting flowcharts, swimlanes and checklists
- SOP library index with owner, status and next review date
What is real here
Kelly has written and rolled out SOPs, policies and training at a professional-services firm and a construction business, and wrote the inventory, purchasing, scheduling and training SOPs for a specialty coffee bar she co-founded. Cedar & Main and its documents are fictional.
Service path: Systems Setup and Cleanup
Related: Contractor systems
The storyboard
Cedar & Main Consulting (fictional) · Illustrative data. Images are 16:9 slides from the sample project.
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