Process Documentation: Examples and Templates

As your business grows, things inevitably become complex. There are more people, more tasks, and more steps, all of which need to be arranged in the most efficient way possible. Assuming things will naturally fall into place and procedures will work themselves out is why many startups and companies lose momentum as soon as they expand their team.

Maintaining accurate and well-organized process documentation is considered to be one of the best ways to avoid chaos and keep things efficient and consistent.

Let's dive deeper into what process documentation is and why you should care.

• What is process documentation?
• Process documentation examples
• Benefits of process documentation
• How to create process documentation
• Process documentation template
• Process documentation people will actually read

What is process documentation?

Process documentation is a step-by-step description of how to execute a process from start to finish. Processes can be documented in the form of policies, checklists, tutorials, forms, screenshots, and so on – anything that describes how a process should be executed.

Think of process documentation as your team's cookbook. Recipes are written down because they’re the easiest way to duplicate a tested process. Similarly, any task that is done more than once or completed by multiple people needs to be documented.

Process documentation examples

A common process documentation example is a standard operating procedure (SOP) document.

Here's an SOP example created in Nuclino. Nuclino is a unified workspace where you can collaborate on internal documentation, manage projects, onboard new employees, take meeting minutes, collaborate on documents, and bring all your team's work together.

Other examples of business processes that are typically documented include:

• Performance reviews

• Customer complaint resolution process

• Equipment inspection and maintenance procedures

• Service delivery process

• Accounting procedures, such as invoicing or managing potential bad debt expenses

• New employee onboarding

The specific processes that need to be documented can vary significantly from one company to another. For instance, an online business dealing with multiple vendors and complex supply chains needs to have a well-documented e-commerce workflow that covers order processing, inventory management, payment handling, shipping procedures, and more.

Benefits of process documentation

Let's face it – process documentation sounds tedious and boring. Some businesses perform it only because they think it’s what they are “supposed” to do. Others avoid process documentation entirely, feeling that it's a complete waste of time and money. Most companies feel a push and pull between trying to do the right thing by documenting and trying not to waste resources by documenting.

The reasons many companies cite as excuses for avoiding documentation are countless:

• “Too much is changing right now.” You wouldn’t want to spend valuable time documenting and standardizing things that might change in the near future.

• “Procedures are constrictive.” You need to be flexible to be successful. Standardization would only stifle your ability to innovate.

• “There is no time for this.” It doesn't seem like a priority to document things that you might barely have time to complete in the first place.

• “It's too corporate and bureaucratic.” You want to keep a more informal, personal company culture and don't want to adopt what seems like a practice best suited for large corporations.

Sounds familiar? If so, you're certainly not alone. To understand why process documentation is worth your time, it's helpful to look back at one of the world’s most influential business process improvement examples.

Henry Ford did not invent the car – he invented a process. His novel approach to manufacturing allowed him to create America’s first mass-produced affordable car, transforming the automotive industry and the business world as we know it.

The idea was simple: instead of one artisan creating a product alone, everyone was taught to do one of 84 simple, repetitive jobs. The introduction of the assembly line cut the manufacturing time of the Model T down from 12.5 hours to 2.5 hours!

At the end of the day, any business is essentially a group of interrelated and often repetitive tasks and processes. But it's only when you formalize them, that you are forced to think about the workflow with productivity in mind.

Documenting processes can help you achieve five key things:

• Process optimization. Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies by documenting the exact processes. You’ll quickly see what processes you need to improve or get rid of.

• Process automation. Process documentation helps discover tasks that can be easily automated, saving time and resources. For example, by thoroughly documenting how you manage payments and invoices at your organization, you can find ways to automate your invoice processing workflow (e.g. by implementing an invoice generator, creating a reusable online invoice template, or integrating a payment processing system).

• New employee training. Internal documentation helps new employees understand their job roles and familiarize themselves with the processes they’ll be involved in.

• Company knowledge sharing and retention. Documentation preserves a record of processes known only to a few people specialized in doing them. Without it, when an employee leaves, any process knowledge leaves with them.

• Operational consistency. If you don’t document a process, essentially it is being reinvented by someone every time it is repeated.

In summary, the biggest value of process documentation is standardizing and scaling the things that already work for you, identifying ways to optimize the things that don't, and sharing that information with others on your team. It's a core part of business process management.

Of course, process standardization is only effective if you have validated processes to standardize. That means that if you are a startup that hasn't yet laid a solid foundation, documentation will be a waste of time. However, as soon as your business begins to mature, diligent process documentation starts to play a critical role.

How to create process documentation

Let’s assume that you have absolutely zero process documentation in your organization and are starting with a blank slate. You have to go through what is called process discovery. Try to involve everybody who is part of the process and follow these steps:

Step 1: Define the process and its scope

Decide which process you are going to document. Determine its purpose and scope – why and how the process will benefit the organization. Establish what should be the desired outcome of the process and list down what resources are necessary to carry out each of the steps.

Step 2: Organize the steps

Gather all information on process steps from start to finish and identify the starting point or whatever triggers the process. Once you have established that, the rest is simply a matter of asking questions. What happens next? Who does this? And how do you know when it’s done?

Step 3: Describe who is involved

Decide each individual who will be responsible for the process tasks. Define their roles. Keep in mind to mention their job title rather than their name.

Step 4: Note down exceptions to the normal process flow

A business process may not always follow the same flow due to various reasons. Mention these exceptions and what steps will be taken to address them.

Step 5: Add control points

Identify where risks could occur in the process and add control points to help monitor the process. Establish measurements to determine its effectiveness and possibly improve it.

Step 6: Review and test the process

Gather everyone involved and review the process you’ve documented. Once done, test the process and see if you’ve missed anything.

Process documentation template

It's important to keep your documentation consistent in style, format, and level of detail. Most companies use the same process documentation template for every workflow they document. Here is an example of what such a template could look like.

Process documentation people will actually read

Part of what makes process documentation seem so frustrating is that the finished documents are never read or updated, becoming a relic of some long-forgotten meeting decision. There are a few ways to ensure that the time you invest in documenting processes is not wasted and creates real value for your business.

• Make documentation easy to access and search. One of the main goals of documentation is to share and manage knowledge. When access to the documents is restricted or available on-demand only, it sends a message that the information is only relevant to certain people and discourages your team from using it. Process documentation needs to be published on a documentation platform where your team will see it daily. One example of such a process documentation platform is Nuclino, a unified workspace where you can bring all your team's knowledge, docs, and projects together in one place.

• Make it easy to edit. Processes are dynamic. They change over time – managers redistribute tasks, people join and leave the company, roles change. Feedback and new input are essential for the process documentation to be effective, so contributions need to be as effortless as possible. In Nuclino, every document can be collaboratively edited in real time, while version history captures the changes and makes it possible to easily restore earlier versions if necessary.

• Be concise. Don’t distract your readers with excessive amounts of information. Provide only as much guidance as needed without going into unnecessary details. There are many AI writing tools, such as QuillBot paraphraser, Hemingway readability editor, or Prepostseo text summarizer, that can help you stay clear, concise, and to the point, and make your documentation easier to read.

• Invest in visual process mapping. A picture is often worth a thousand words of documentation. So, instead of literally describing every step of a business process, help the readers digest the information by presenting it in the form of a diagram or a flowchart. In Nuclino, you can add an infinite collaborative canvas to any process document and create flowcharts without needing a separate diagramming or process mapping tool.

Process documentation can be a boring and tedious chore. It can also be a great way of empowering your team to do more, faster – if done right. If your company documents are inaccessible, outdated, or confusing, they’ll be a source of frustration, if they are read at all. On the other hand, if they're succinct, informative, and up-to-date, they can enable your employees to be efficient and independent, and help create a culture of transparency at your company.

If you decide to invest time into process documentation, make your time and efforts count and treat it as an asset rather than a chore to cross off your to-do list.

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