What to document
Five things every process document should answer.
These five questions form the minimum useful set. Anything that goes into the document should answer at least one of them. Anything that does not answer any of them should not be in the document.
What the next person needs
What the document needs to answer
What triggers this process? The specific event or condition that causes someone to start this process. Not "when appropriate" or "as needed", the specific trigger that a new person would recognise without guessing.
What are the steps, in order? The sequence of actions that needs to happen, in the order they need to happen. Each step should be specific enough that someone who has never done it can do it correctly on the first attempt.
Who is responsible for each step? The role, not the name. Names change. "The account manager responsible for this client" is more useful than "Sarah" when Sarah has moved on.
What are the most likely exceptions, and what should happen when they occur? Not every exception, the two or three that come up most often and that a new person would not know how to handle without asking.
What does a completed process look like? How does the person doing the process know it is finished? What record should exist when it is done, and where?
Format decisions
How to structure the document so people actually use it.
The format matters almost as much as the content. A process document that is structurally difficult to navigate will not be used, regardless of how accurate its content is.
Format decision 1
One process, one document
The most common formatting mistake is combining multiple processes into one document because they are related. A sales handoff process and an onboarding process are related, but they are separate processes with separate triggers, steps, and owners. Combining them into one document makes each one harder to find and harder to update without affecting the other.
One process per document also makes it easier to version. When the sales handoff process changes, you update the sales handoff document. You do not have to navigate a combined document and update only the relevant section while leaving the rest intact.
Format decision 2
Steps as numbered actions, not paragraphs
Process steps buried in paragraphs are hard to follow. A reader has to extract the action from the prose rather than seeing the action directly. Numbered lists force the documentation to identify each discrete step, which also forces the writer to think clearly about what the steps actually are.
Each step should start with a verb. "Log the call in the CRM under the account record" is a step. "It is important to make sure the CRM reflects the outcome of the call" is not a step. It is advice that implies a step without specifying it.
Format decision 3
Keep it short enough to read in five minutes
A process document that takes thirty minutes to read will not be read when someone needs it urgently, which is exactly when process documentation matters most. The five-minute target is a useful constraint: if the document takes longer than five minutes to read, the process may need to be broken into multiple smaller processes, or the document may contain more than it needs to.
Format decision 4
Date it and own it
Every process document should have a creation date, a last-updated date, and a named owner. The owner is not responsible for maintaining the document themselves necessarily, but they are responsible for noticing when the process has changed enough that the document is no longer accurate and initiating an update.
An undated, unowned process document is a liability. It may reflect how the process ran two years ago. It may have been updated without the date changing. Without a date and an owner, there is no way to assess whether the document can be trusted.
The useful standard
If following the document needs a phone call, the document is not finished.
Most documentation assumes knowledge the author never made explicit. Handing it to a new person and watching where they get stuck is the fastest way to find those gaps.
