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Product management has many moving parts, but any product manager will tell you that the hardest part of the job is deciding what to build when. A list of good feature ideas may be endless but time, resources, money, and energy are not. Prioritizing potential features from a long list means deciding on what’s important, realistic, and urgent. In this article, we will look at some of the best ways to prioritize features and the visual tools you can use to align teams and make collective decisions on how to manage your product backlog.

Why Feature Prioritization Is so Hard:

In a study conducted by Mind the Product Survey, 49% of product managers said that their biggest challenge was not being able to conduct proper market research to validate whether the market truly needs what they are building. This is largely due to the haphazard nature in which feature requests come in and not having standardized ways to measure the impact of working on a particular feature.

Personal Biases: The decision to build a particular feature is oftentimes not just a product decision, but a personal one. Every single feature idea represents someone’s hard work and opinion. In large organizations, with multiple stakeholders with different levels of investment and control, people in higher positions can insert their choices or opinions without the necessary data or understanding and consequences. All too often product managers fall prey to HiPPO ( Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) and prioritize features that have no lasting value in the development of products. 

Sales and Support Requests: They are often the loudest people at the table and can be difficult to ignore. While it is important to listen to the sales team as they are closest to interacting with customers, features shouldn’t be prioritized in a very reactionary manner without considering the long-term value it will add to the customer. 

Isolated ROI: Often the product vision is set aside to build features that will achieve short-term revenue. But more income doesn’t necessarily equate to a better user experience. Not being tempted by short-term monetary gains is important because in the long run, happier customers are what will bring you the most success.

How Constraints Help in Prioritization:

Constraints can be a good thing. Working with limited time, people, and money can serve as prioritization filters that force you to make tough but important decisions. Making choices based on constraint-specific questions like whether you have the time to build this or the right skill set allows you to focus your energy in more efficient avenues. Generally speaking, constraints could be people, time, or dependency-based and create a framework around which the most optimal decisions have to be made. Therefore, it is critical to fully understand your constraints before making feature decisions.

How to Prioritize Work:

To take personal biases and reactionary based decisions out of the equation, it is useful to look at feature prioritization through the following lenses:

Feasibility: These are the technical implications that need the inputs of back-end engineers, UI designers, and front-end developers. It involves figuring out how technically possible a feature is given the current resources and tools you have. This allows you to frame the question differently and allows you to go from asking “Should we build this?” to “Can we build this in the first place.”

Desirability: This involves the analysis of focusing on the customer experience. The most basic question to answer here is “Do customers actually want it?” It is important to evaluate every feature request against what value it will provide to the end-user. Tools like the house of quality template can help in this evaluation, as they allow teams to map customer needs against design features. This involves talking to researchers, UX designers, marketers, and support, as well as going through any user tests and validation you may have already completed.

Viability: This involves putting feature requests in context with the overall business goals. It entails deciding whether a particular request fits the overall strategy and requirements of the market. By talking to executives and other product managers, you need to understand how a particular feature fits into the overall ecosystem.

Visual Tools to Guide Feature Prioritization:

Effort/ Impact Scale

After evaluating which features are worth pursuing, you still have to decide which features you will work on first. A great way to visualize your options and come to a collective decision with your team is to plot an Effort/ Impact Matrix.  This simple 2X2 grid represents the different levels of effort required to build a feature and visualizes the impact that feature will have. 

The goal here is to find the feature that has the lowest effort but will yield the highest impact. This activity is best done by gathering a group of diverse teammates and getting them to list down a feature, explain it, and place it on an online collaborative whiteboard like Creately. The group then collectively votes on where it should be placed on the grid.

RICE Framework

Sometimes feature prioritization in more detail. The RICE framework is a method to standardise your evaluation criteria and make informed decisions based on the information available. Each feature idea is evaluated on the basis of metrics and given a score accordingly

Reach: Determine how many people your project will affect. Reach is usually measured by the number of people impacted within a given period of time. Assigning tangible data will help you come up with a more meaningful RICE score.

Impact: Impact measures the consequence of your reach and the effect it will have. Impact can be hard to quantify so teams usually use a scale of 1 to 3 to estimate low, medium, and high impact tasks.

Confidence: Confidence is evaluated by how certain you are that an action you take will have the desired result. Confidence is usually measured as a percentage.

Effort: With time and resources limited, you need to determine if a task is worth it and consider the amount of time it will take to execute a project. Effort is measured in person-months, which is the amount of work that one team member can complete in one month.

After you have a number assigned for each category, you can calculate your RICE score. Do this by multiplying reach, impact, and confidence and dividing the total by effort.  The resulting score gives you “total impact per time worked”—a powerful number for prioritizing features accurately.

Kano Model

The Kano Model is a feature prioritization technique that identifies features in a product roadmap based on the likelihood of them satisfying customers. It helps come up with strategically sound decisions by weighing a high-satisfaction feature against its cost to implement. Product managers can use this model when prioritizing new features by grouping them into categories that range from those that could disappoint customers to those that are likely to satisfy or even delight customers.

With the Kano Model, each potential feature is broken down into different categories based on the emotional response expected from users.

Attractive Needs: These are features that aren’t strictly necessary, but will greatly increase the levels of satisfaction of customers if implemented.

Performance Needs: These features are the ones that have a proportional relationship between functionality and satisfaction; the more we provide, the more satisfied our customers become.

Basic Needs: These are the features that customers expect your product to have. If your product doesn’t have them, customers will consider your product incomplete.

Story Mapping: 

This is a great way to identify the Minimum Viable Product by organizing and prioritizing user stories and the development releases. The idea is based on the concept of mapping out the workflow of your product from beginning to end.

It is done in 3 steps;

1. Create the workflow using cards or a Kanban board, arranging the cards from the start of the customer experience to the end.
2. From top to bottom, order the most important things to develop.
3. Finally, you create slices of releases based on the prioritization.

Final Thoughts:

Feature prioritization is part of a broader strategic planning process and needs to always be put into context. The prospect of building new features and experimenting with new functionality can be extremely exciting. But one of the most important roles of a product manager is to be the voice of reason. This means constantly mapping release schedules and roadmaps back to the value of the product. It is important to not let short-term results outweigh your long-term strategy. 

The act of prioritization is never over and you must constantly reprioritize based on business needs and market changes. Although you worked hard to prioritize features, they may change in the future. Make sure your list continues to align with your big picture by taking the time to go through it.

What are some of the best techniques you have come across for product prioritization? Let us know in the comments. 

An organization without key performance indicators (KPIs) is like a journey without a map. When your journey doesn’t have a map, there is no way for you to determine how far you have come since you started. You keep on driving towards a destination without any knowledge of what is in your way. In an organization, having clear KPIs that are linked to your company’s ultimate goals help derive the progress you have made within a set time frame. It helps understand the contributions of team members and what needs to improve.

What is a KPI?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) allows you to obtain quantifiable measurements over time to accomplish a specific goal (or objective). KPIs drive teams towards achieving targets, provide metrics to measure the progress of targets, and ultimately offer valuable insights to make informed decisions on operations management or business processes. The KPI process helps every aspect of a business – be it finance, HR, customer service or marketing – to be efficient and effective in fulfilling its responsibilities.

KPIs and Employee Performance

Employee performance is at the heart of organizational success. Whether an organization’s journey is successful or not, depends on how driven its employees are in reaching its milestones. In order to achieve organizational goals, we first need to set targets at individual and team levels so that they can be linked to that of the company.

Employees are the greatest asset of a company. They need to be encouraged, empowered, and assessed in view of accomplishing business goals. It is vital to pay attention to an employee’s positive and negative behaviours, discuss and give feedback to create an enabling environment for them to learn and improve. This will also align them to work towards team and organizational goals.

How do you measure performance? What quantifiable data can you present as proof of your team’s hard work? Are all team members working on the right goals? And does their work contribute to achieving the ultimate company objectives?

This is where KPIs come into the limelight. KPIs are a form of quantifiable targets that help you to track the progress of your business goals. They will help you to comprehend how the performance of your team members contributes to it. Moreover, KPIs will also support in identifying knowledge gaps and allow you to implement qualitative training plans accordingly.

Why are KPIs important?

As mentioned above, KPIs are essential to identify the contributions of your team members towards overall business goals. Here are some notable reasons why you should implement a KPI process in your organization.

To ensure your teams are accountable and aligned towards goals. This is especially important when monitoring the progress of a particular project. A clearly defined KPI process ensures that team members acknowledge their responsibilities and are making collective efforts towards fulfilling them.

To keep track of the company’s health score. Key performance indicators undoubtedly provide valuable insights into an organization’s operations. While they offer a comprehensive understanding of prevalent financial performance, they also shed light on potential risk factors such as shortages in the capital, new competitors, or knowledge gaps.

To monitor progress over time. KPIs allow you to set goals at the beginning of the financial year and utilize monthly or quarterly reports to measure the progress made by tracking key criteria such as revenue, cost per transaction, customer satisfaction rate and so on. Since KPIs are aligned with organizational targets, this will also assist to track the progress towards a company’s long term goals and strategies.

To make improvements when and where necessary. Once KPI results are analyzed, they allow you to concentrate on which areas of the business need improvement and whether any adjustments should be made to the current course of action. This will save you from making the wrong decisions and predict future scenarios. Since KPIs are measurable, you can directly influence the factors that determine their results and take preventative actions to ensure that you are on track to achieve your goals.

KPI Process

Step 01 – Determine how KPIs will be used

The first step in setting KPIs is to understand how these performance indicators will be used to monitor progress. Before setting KPIs for teams, gather the members and discuss what criteria should be used to determine their KPIs and how these will impact their performance. 

KPIs are simply a form of communication, and like any communication framework, KPIs too should be clearly understood by the people they are assigned to so that they can be acted upon. Make sure your team members are data literate and equipped with the right knowledge, tools and skills to make the right decisions based on the data they work with.

Step 02 – Link KPIs to organizational goals

Companies often make the mistake of adopting vague KPIs that don’t reflect their business processes and thus fail to see any substantial impact. Your KPIs should be linked to organizational goals so that you know that the company is on the right track. For instance, companies may define their development strategies under the perspectives of finance, internal business processes, learning and growth, and customer. Accordingly, the KPIs that you set too should fall under these categories.

For instance, company ABC may set a goal under the learning and growth aspect to provide soft skills training to its employees within a budget of 6 million. Here, the Human Resources Manager and his/her team would be chief custodians of achieving this target. Hence, to align with this goal, they could have a KPI to conduct six soft skills training workshops per quarter (24 workshops per year) while maintaining their expenses under the set budget.

Another key aspect of the KPI process is to ensure that your team understands the ultimate goals of the organization and the plan of action that should be followed to achieve them. This will empower your workforce with a purpose to fulfil their responsibilities.

Step 03 – Are your KPIs SMART?

Use the SMART formula to determine how effective your KPIs are.

Specific – The KPI you set should be focused on a specific aspect of your business that can be measurable, and determine why it is important.

Measurable – As mentioned above, it should be measurable and benchmarked against a defined standard.

Achievable – The KPI should be deliverable.

Relevant – It should be relevant to a business process within the company while being linked to the organization’s strategic objectives.

Time-Bound – The KPI should be achievable in a set time frame.

Step 04 – Audit KPIs when necessary and make changes

Businesses diversify or change their existing processes depending on market conditions. When this happens you may need to revise the previously set KPIs and establish new indicators which would align with the new goals. Hence, it is important to audit KPIs annually and make changes where necessary – so you are certain that KPIs are aligned with changed directives of the business. Use the below template to audit your KPIs.

Let KPIs Guide You Towards Success

Key performance indicators significantly contribute to drive a business to achieve its goals. In today’s competitive and complex business environment, it is becoming increasingly important to have defined business goals and a clear plan of action on how to achieve them. As such, KPIs can be your guiding light to determine the direction of your journey and your progress.

Although both product teams and marketing teams work towards a common overarching goal – which, in most cases, is a successful product, happy customers, and a thriving company – they often work in silos. Amidst accomplishing daily tasks and pushing towards achieving short-term goals, both teams often fall out of touch with each other. 

However, the work of both the product team and the marketing team is informed by the same needs of the market; customer pain points, demands, and goals. While the product team needs the marketing team to provide the insight required to build impactful, relevant products, the marketing team needs a successful product to attract more customers by maintaining a product backlog. When both teams work in tandem, they are able to accomplish more; deliver a seamless customer experience through better products efficiently. This purpose can be effectively achieved using the target audience template.

In this post we will look at some of the best practices marketing and product teams can follow to stay aligned and deliver the most desired customer experience. 

Why You Need a Joint Product-Marketing Team 

The impact of closer alignment between product and marketing teams can benefit an organization in many ways. 

Increase product familiarity;

Often, the marketing team in an organization fails to effectively create their messaging around the product because they lack the relevant knowledge of the product and its functionality. Working closely with the product team allows them to avoid this by learning more about the features, designs, user experiences, and customer personas which in turn will allow them to create more impactful marketing content. 

Ensure that the product meets customer needs;

When you are not fully aware of customer needs and problems, you often create solutions that eventually fail. When the product team works alone, they miss out on the abundance of customer data and analytics the marketing team has access to. A joint product-marketing team can overcome this challenge easily; the marketing team can provide the product team with insight into the marketplace needed to align the efforts of the product team with market needs.   

Improve team skills and development;

Collaboration between the two teams will expose members from both teams to new skills and knowledge. This will in turn help them improve how they perform in their own roles and complete their tasks.

How to Align Marketing and Product Teams 

Although separated by different success metrics, work styles, expertise, and tools, there are several ways to bring marketing and product teams on the same page and keep them well-aligned in order to generate more impactful outcomes. 

Set Shared Goals

A common vision or objective is the easiest way to bring two teams together and on the same page. Shared goals give the two teams a reason to keep on working together ensuring that they stay motivated and collaborate effectively throughout their projects.

A shared purpose also helps solve the debate on where to spend their time and resources on. However, in order to keep the swimlanes clear and to clarify accountability for more niche outcomes, you can set separate goals as necessary. 

How to set common cross-functional team goals; 

• Ensure that the goals you set adhere to the SMART criteria.
  • Specific: the outcome or the end result should be clear and specific to everyone. 
  • Measurable: the end result or the progress should be measurable. 
  • Attainable: the goal shouldn’t be impossible to achieve with the current team and available resources. 
  • Relevant: the goal should align with the direction of the organization.
  • Time-bound: the goal should have a clearly defined timeline, starting data, and a deadline. 
• Identify obstacles that may hinder the progress of your goals early on and identify precautions. 
• Create an action plan to lay out the next steps, identify the resources, assign responsibilities, and set deadlines. 

Resources; 

The Easy Guide to the Goal Setting Process

Get Your Team to Crush Their New Year Goals with These Visual Tools

Use a Shared Workspace to Capture and Work on Ideas

Whether your teams are co-located or working remotely, a central workspace to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute projects can help streamline communication and collaboration across the organization. A shared workspace can not only improve productivity but also increase transparency. 

An online visual workspace like Creately can be used to centralize all content and communication related to the two teams on a single, connected canvas. It can be used as a single source of truth to host resources, links, information, and data, and as a whiteboard to facilitate meetings, workshops, and project planning. 

Creately provides; 

• Diagram types and pre-built templates for ideation sessions, project planning (i.e. Kanban boards, Gantt charts, WBS diagrams), engineering and software development, and more. 
• In-app video conferencing, live mouse tracking, and synced change previews for synchronous collaboration. 
• Comment discussion threads for asynchronous collaboration.
• Plugins for Google Drive, Confluence, Slack, and more to streamline cross-team workflows across platforms. 

Increase Transparency

When it comes to access to relevant information, a little transparency can go a long way. Especially for two teams like marketing and product that often don’t interact with each other naturally.  

A few ways to overcome the challenge of poor access to timely data are,

• To make information available for everyone in a shared, visible space – an online visual workspace like Creately or a task management tool like Favro. This democratizes access to key information and enables both teams to work on their own time.
• To encourage team members to share their daily progress in a public chat (i.e. common Slack channel). They can use the same channel to bring up and discuss blockers and progress made on the tasks and share other key project updates. 
• Conduct weekly all-hands meetings or retrospective meetings to discuss the progress of projects/ tasks, challenges, and the way forward.
• Conduct asynchronous scrum meetings; which you can do again using a public chat or on a Creately template like the one below to share updates on what you’ve worked on yesterday, what you are working on today, and the blockers you’re facing.

Resources; 

The Quick Guide to Running Productive Retrospectives Remotely

Use a Common Language 

Using a common language and standardizing internal jargon when referring to the product, its features, and the customer can help remove friction from collaboration between the two teams. This reduces confusion when making decisions and helps improve overall communication.

Educate everyone in both teams about the important terms and definitions with regard to the product and marketing. If need be, create a library/ wiki or host a workshop to familiarize everyone with the information, processes, and workflows. 

Create a Joint Product-Marketing Squad

Just like shared vision ensures that the two teams are aligned on their tasks, a cross-functional squad – made up of talents from both the marketing and product team – helps make sure that they stay aligned on the execution of those tasks. Moreover, such a squad can help streamline communication and collaboration between the two teams, improve decision-making, and enable the cross-pollination of ideas.

To create your own product-marketing squad, 

• Start by selecting the members of the squad for the relevant project. Ideally, those familiar with and in charge of the primary tasks of the project should be included.   
• Then identify the roles and responsibilities of each member of the squad. A RACI chart can be used to establish how they should fit in within the group.

• Collaborate on creating a project plan to detail out and finalize the project objectives, steps, resources, timelines, etc. This ensures that everyone’s on the same page.  
• Meet up regularly to share frequent updates on project tasks and progress and make sure that information is readily available to everyone.

What Are Your Thoughts on Aligning Product and Marketing Teams? 

Today’s business challenges are too complex for isolated talents working in pseudo teams. Finding effective solutions for these complex problems require cross-functional team alignment.  

Aligning product and marketing teams is easier said than done, as collaboration between them isn’t always intuitive. However, a joint product-marketing team is the fastest way to ensure a superior customer experience. 

As you try to gain the right balance between your own marketing and product team, we hope these tips will help you accelerate the process. Got more tips? Let us know in the comments section below.

Developing a comprehensive understanding of business systems is hard work. It usually involves high-level modeling or complex process mapping. This can be a highly technical and laborious process that involves a lot of trial and error. Creating BPMN diagrams or UML schematics can be very useful in understanding the broader functioning of a business, but they are fundamentally technical in nature and can exclude non-technical domain experts.

Domain-Driven Design 

Domain-Driven Design is a methodology that establishes a technology-independent language that allows for a detailed understanding of business needs and processes. This allows stakeholders to communicate their domain knowledge to the rest of the team in a language-agnostic manner to develop a shared understanding of systems.

What is Event Storming?

Event storming is a workshop-based approach to Domain Driven Design that brings technical and non-technical stakeholders together to explore complex business domains. It focuses on domain events that are generated in the context of a business process or business application. It usually involves product owners, domain experts and developers. 

The event storming method was introduced and publicized by Alberto Brandolini in Introducing EventStorming. It is used as a technique to rapidly capture a solution design and improve the team’s understanding of the design. 

Event storming is a form of group learning and is a fun way to integrate development and product teams to create alternative solutions together. Event storming may also be useful for teams with mature products to order the process and find out about bottlenecks and areas of conflict.

An event storming session is usually conducted to:

• Create a business model for the development of a project.
• Gain a “big picture” awareness of the product model in all its complexity, highlighting its goals and needs.
• Visualize the product model and brainstorm alternative solutions.
• Find bottlenecks and areas of conflict on mature products.

The Benefits of Event Storming

While building a product it is important for the development team to be well-versed in the business domain the product operates in. It allows for a clearer initial analysis and a more focused build. A workshop like an event storming session can boost the overall co-operation between business and product teams.

Quick: Most other business process modeling techniques are an in-depth deep dive into the operations of the business. They involve using complex data models and can take weeks to depict an accurate picture. Event storming is a rapid approach to modeling domain-driven design. An event storm is usually a single-day event where a complete business process can be mapped in a few hours. 

Shared Understanding Between Technical and Non-Technical Stakeholders: Unlike UML, an event storm creates a representation of a business process that can be easily understood without any prior technical knowledge. 

Collaborative: The core concept of an event storm is to encourage participation and interaction between domain experts. It creates an engaging environment to create business models and results in the discovery of more valuable insights. 

Effective: The greatest benefit of event storming is the conversations it starts. Teams can use the knowledge gained in the workshop to inform future modeling processes and build products, or can simply use event storming to better understand business processes and make better decisions going forward.

Conducting the Event Storm 

To conduct an event storm you need to gather various stakeholders with specific domain expertise together. This can be done in a physical location or virtually using a collaborative whiteboard tool like Creately. It allows you to conduct the entire session remotely on a single, infinite canvas and can be used as a shared space where stakeholders can exchange thoughts and ideas in real-time.

Step 1: Domain Events

The first step is to identify domain events. They are factual statements about the things that happened in a business system. Participants brainstorm and list down all the things that happened in a system that triggered important reactions. Then they list down these events as colour-coded notes on the virtual canvas. It is important to phrase these statements in the past tense so participants can frame this as a ‘what happened’ statement. As participants add events to the canvas, you can begin to organize them according to the time frame in which they occurred. 

Step 2- Commands

The next step is to identify why the event occurred. In this stage, the team analyzes what triggered the events. While events are factual statements about the past, commands express our intent for something to happen in the future. Commands are usually listed down on blue notes. While events are captured as past tense statements, commands are listed down as present tense intentions. Commands may be documented as both user and system actions. 

Step 3- Aggregates

These are the things that happen in a system that generally take place in a group of events. They are higher-order business entities that should be represented as nouns.

For example, ‘Order Process’. An aggregate usually consists of a collection of notes on the canvas. 

It is represented by a cluster of events with corresponding commands and the responsible actor. That aggregate can then be named and placed on a larger color-coordinated note on the canvas. 

Step 4 – Bounded Contexts

This is a high-level structure that consists of categorizations of functionality that group related entities together. The team begins to group together modules within an element called bounded contexts by drawing a box or circle around the related modules. You can then begin context mapping by illustrating how modules within a bounded context interact with other contexts. Simply put, all related events would fall into the same bounded context. For example, all events related to shopping carts would fall into the shopping cart bounded context.  

Tips for Conducting Your Event Storming Session

• Participants: The key aspect of a successful event storm is organizing the right people. Participants should consist of key stakeholders with domain expertise across multiple domains. An effective event storm usually has a small group of stakeholders to ensure free-flowing conversation and a collaborative environment.
• Plan Sessions: Set goals and intentions for the session. This allows you to be more focused on what should be involved in the session and what aspects should be left out.
• Send Instructions Ahead of Time: Allow participants to understand what the point of the exercise is and what is expected of them. Send instructions of what the key is and what different colored notes represent, so participants have a clear understanding while conducting the session
• Have Discussions in Nontechnical Language: Ensure conversations are not bogged down by the specifics of implementation. These conversations should be more conceptual in nature so that everyone can participate, regardless of their technical background.
• Provide Examples: It is helpful to showcase a completed event storming canvas so participants know what they need to work up to.

Have Experience Conducting an Event Storming Session? Tell us About it.

Have you participated or conducted an event storming session before, we would love to hear about your experience and some of the learning you came away with. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

Every organization needs a set of rules to guide its members. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are established for this purpose. SOPs are an essential part of any business and are necessary to ensure the quality and consistency of organizational operations amid the busyness of daily work. 

This post will help you as you write your organization’s own standard operating procedures effectively and make them part of your day-to-day management approach. It explains and includes,

• What are SOPs 
• Different SOP formats
• How to write SOPs and best practices 
• Editable SOP templates 

What Are Standard Operating Procedures

Standard operating procedures are a set of written guidance on how to accurately perform important, routine, or repetitive activities or processes in an organization. 

They explain the way activities should be performed in order to facilitate conformance to technical and quality system requirements and to support data quality. 

SOPs are typically specific to the organization they are written for and assist them in maintaining its quality assurance and quality control processes. They also help organizations ensure that they adhere to governmental regulations and maintain consistency in the quality and integrity of products and services they offer. 

SOPs,

• Are cross-functional documents 
• Represent workflow across functions 
• Are initiated through a process map 
• Answer the question ‘who does what?’
• Are written in active voice 

Terms such as protocols, worksheets, work instructions, and laboratory operating procedures are also used instead of standard operating procedures.

Importance of Standard Operating Procedures

Almost every activity, from cleaning a production machine to carrying out a critical process can be documented through standard operating procedures. They help,

• Improve business performance by providing protection, health, environmental and operational information necessary to successfully carry out individual business processes 
• Ensure the safety and quality of products and services
• Ensure compliance with relevant standards, regulations, and guidelines  
• Remove variations in procedures and processes carried out by different employees in different locations or factories, thus helping maintain consistency 
• Serve as a sound foundation for training and onboarding new employees
• Enable control of processes and in turn, allow opportunities for continuous improvement  
• Facilitate improved communication
• Serve as checklists to help inspectors with auditing procedures  
• Reconstruct operational systems in new settings

Types of SOP | Standard Operating Procedure Formats

While organizations can use a preferred or a customized format to write their standard operating procedures, there are a few types of SOP formats that are widely used by organizations out there.

Checklist format 

This takes the form of a checklist maker where the different tasks to be performed are outlined. This is suitable for smaller teams or individuals who don’t require detailed instructions. 

Step-by-step format 

This format uses bulleted or numbered lists to present the SOP guidelines. This format is best suited for procedures or processes that are routine, straightforward, and easy to follow.  

Hierarchical format 

Similar to the step-by-step format, the hierarchical format also explains the procedures step-by-step. However, in this format, substeps are added under each primary step as bulleted or numbered lists to highlight the required additional information. This format is best suited for complex procedures with a lot of information. 

Flowchart format

Flowcharts help simplify complex standard operating procedures with many possible outcomes that are unpredictable through visualization. This format also highlights how each step of the process is connected to each other, hence clearly outlining its flow for easier comprehension. 

How to Write Standard Operating Procedures and Best Practices 

Step 1: Identify the procedures to be documented 

The first step is to identify the activities, processes, or workflows that you need to write guidelines for. 

Talk to an expert on the processes or individual employees to find out the activities they perform daily, weekly, or monthly in almost the same way. You have the option to collect the necessary information here through a survey as well if talking to them proves difficult. 

With this list in hand, you can then proceed to single out the processes that need to be standardized.

If the requirement is to update an existing SOP, review and improve it with the help of someone who has proper training and experience in carrying out the relevant process.

Step 2: Define the objective 

Next, identify the objective of creating the SOP document. Is it to align the processes with business priorities? Or to ensure that processes function well? Identifying the reason for writing the SOPs will allow you to structure it more effectively. 

In the case of an existing SOP, identify the pain points or obstacles in your processes that are causing delays and failures and determine what changes should be made to improve them. 

Step 3: Choose a format

There are a variety of SOP formats that cater to different business requirements and the processes involved. As discussed above, these SOP formats include checklists, step-by-step format, hierarchical format, and the flowchart format. One of these formats can be selected based on the type of information you want to share.

Step 4: Identify the creators and stakeholders 

SOPs should be written by subject-matter experts who are actually involved in carrying out or using the process.

 When writing standard operating procedures for multi-tasked processes, consider a team approach where the experiences of multiple individuals involved can be utilized.   

In addition, C-level executives and management leaders can also be involved to ensure that the SOPs

• Align with the higher-level business priorities 
• Has the necessary resources and the equipment to be implemented 
• Are plausible in terms of resource consumption and logistics 

Tip: Whether you rely on the task owner or an in-house writer to document the standard operating procedures, make sure that they have the necessary technical writing skills and in-depth knowledge of the relevant organizational processes.

Step 5: Determine the audience 

Knowing who will be referring to the SOPs is essential to write them effectively. 

SOPs should be written with sufficient detail that allows employees, even someone with limited knowledge of and experience with the process, to reproduce the procedure without supervision. 

In order to determine the level of detail that should be included in an SOP, you need to first understand who you are writing it for. This could be a new employee without any prior knowledge or someone who has performed the activities several times. Learning their needs will help you customize the SOP for their comprehension by 

• Focusing thoroughly on their duties 
• Using the correct language and terminology familiar to them, and explanations of the terminology that are new to them 

Tip: Talk to the employees who are ultimately responsible for carrying out the processes and learn about the challenges they face and listen to their suggestions. Using a visual workspace like Creately, you can bring everyone on to the same canvas to facilitate collaboration as you visualize, edit, and review the standard operating procedures.

Step 6: Create an outline of the SOP 

Once everything has been finalized – the process, creators, audience, and the format – start planning the document. Following are the typical components included in the SOP document. 

The elements of an SOP document

• Title page – this is reserved to include the relevant information about the document, including the SOP name, date of creation, unique identification number, the names of the writers of the document, and department or the designation of the individuals who will be implementing the SOP.
• Table of contents –  If necessary, include a table of contents to make it easier for anyone to navigate through the document. This element is useful in the case of SOP documents that contain multiple pages. 
• Preparatory information –  this includes preliminary information such as the purpose of the SOP, roles and responsibilities, resources, materials, and equipment needed, and safety precautions. 
• Methodology and procedures – this section explains the procedures using the chosen SOP format. 
• Quality control and assurance – this is where the rubrics or other means to measure employee performance with regard to the SOPs are outlined. 
• Reference and glossary –  this section is reserved to list down the external resources you have cited within the document and explain the terms you have referred to in more detail. 

Tip: Accompany complex details with simplified diagrams such as flowcharts, process maps, or workflow diagrams and illustrations to help the reader comprehend better.

Use a consistent writing style 

SOPs should be easy-to-understand, concise, and precise to ensure that everyone understands and follows them correctly, hence avoiding quality and safety risks and deviations. For this purpose, make sure that the standard operating procedures,  

• Are written using a step-by-step format that is easy to follow
• Are unambiguous and not very complex 
• Are written using the active voice and present verb tense. Avoid using but imply the term ‘you’ 
• Are not lengthy and redundant 
• Adhere to the style guide (i.e. font type, font size, and colors used) used by the organization
• Use flowcharts to visualize processes being explained 

Step 7: Review and approve the SOPs

The written SOPs should be reviewed by one or more individuals who have proper knowledge of, and training, and experience with the process. Reviewers should make note of and share any issues or concerns they come across while reviewing the document. These can then be corrected before approval. 

Tip: Get the individual who is ultimately responsible for carrying out the process to test out the drafted SOPs before finalizing them.  

In order to be effective, SOPs need to remain current. This entails regularly reviewing, updating, and re-approving them whenever procedures undergo change. 

These SOPs should also be systematically reviewed every 1-2 years to ensure they are relevant. As a best practice, always mention the review date of the SOPs that have been reviewed. In case a certain process is no longer followed, remove it from the file and archive it.  

Tip: Make sure that the SOP documents are readily available either in hard copy or digitally, especially to those who are directly involved in performing the activities. Create an SOP library with Creately; centralize all necessary documents, resources, links, and visuals related to your SOP documentation in a single-connected workspace where you can collaborate in real-time through video conferencing and synchronous editing.  

Ready to Write Your Own Standard Operating Procedures?

SOPs allow you to take the best methods of working in a business and create a simple document of best practices that enables everyone to perform their best at what they do. In this post, we have covered everything from how to write effective standard operating procedures to templates you can use right away. Follow the steps to create one successfully.

Share your experience and insights with us in the comments section below.

If the project is a ship, project management is its sail. Project management is what provides a directive to a particular project so that it could be steered towards success. However, one might face unprecedented project management challenges when executing a project.

Creately, together with the Proofhub team and its Chief Marketing Officer Vartika Kashyap, hosted a Twitter Chat, intending to shed light on the 10 biggest project management challenges and how to avoid them.

Given below is a curated list of the challenges and the replies of participants, on addressing them.

Challenges

1. Dismantling silos and build an environment that encourages effective and efficient project collaboration and communication
2. The contribution of proper planning to project success
3. Handling the project management challenges that arise when the project team lacks the necessary skills to tackle the problem at hand
4. Importance of a contingency plan in project management
5. Creating an environment of accountability where the team takes responsibility for their actions and duly fulfils their assigned roles
6. Improving stakeholder engagement and ensuring that everyone’s on the same page
7. Setting clear goals and success criteria to ensure project success
8. Importance of getting the right Project Management Software
9. Improving project team collaboration and build trust
10. Allocating resources to a project

How to dismantle silos and build an environment that encourages effective and efficient project collaboration and communication?

A project team can’t function in silos. The successful execution of a project depends on how effectively each team member collaborates with one another in fulfilling tasks. To this end, Proofhub team highlighted the importance of conducting all project-related communications via one common portal accessible by everyone in the team.

“Bring everyone on the same communication portal and let all nuclear teams participate without creative restrictions. Each one, teach one!”

Proofhub

Complimenting Proofhub’s statement, CMO Vartika Kashyap too stated that using communication tools and building cross-functional teams can ensure effective and efficient project collaboration.

“Build cross-functional teams. Use communication tools. Enable a more open and transparent culture.”

Vartika Kashyap

What about remote working? The pandemic has propelled a rapid increase in remote working patterns due to lockdowns and travel restrictions. Creately directed a question to Kashyap about the extra steps that a company should take when getting rid of silos in a remote work environment.

In reply, Kashyap stressed the importance of transparent work culture.

“Make transparency the new culture. Treat communication as a two-way street. Combat productivity/engagement pits with virtual cultural initiatives.”

Vartika Kashyap

A study states that about 39% of projects fail due to shortfalls in project planning. How does planning contribute to project success?

Former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower once stated that “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” A plan is vital when carrying out a project. 

Proofhub emphasized the importance of having a proper project plan.

“Project planning is akin to the compass and the rudder on a sailing ship. You might still reach your destination without them, it will just take 100 years longer.”

Proofhub

Participant Nandini Sehedev pointed out the numerous benefits of having a project plan.

“Project planning is vital to prevent or minimize risk occurrences and failure rates. Project planning helps guide sponsors, teams, stakeholders; and the project manager navigates through tricky phases of the project.”

Nandini Sehdev

How to handle project management challenges that arise when the project team lacks the necessary skills to tackle the problem at hand?

You may face unprecedented challenges or issues when working on a project. In such circumstances, you may be able to resolve them without a notable impact on project progress, if you are armed with the necessary skills to tackle them. Imagine a scenario where you don’t know how to resolve an issue? What is the way forward then?

Proofhub underlined that a team collaboration to visualize the problem at hand would result in a different perspective and probable resolutions.

“Gather the team, make them talk, listen to them and help them visualize what’s wrong. Most teams are capable of solving problems but are slow to catch up to them. If you become their guiding light, they’ll find the end of the tunnel.”

Proofhub

Visual workspaces such as Creately can be effective in tracing back your steps and re-evaluating the processes. For instance, you can use a cause and effect diagram to figure out the root causes of the problem and use mind maps to brainstorm solutions.

How to bridge skill gaps? Communicate openly and create an environment where team members can participate in engaging learning experiences.

“Open communication is essential if you hope to reduce the skill gaps successfully. You can also create engaging learning experiences and it is not enough to just conduct learning programs but to assess whether your strategies are effective or not.”

Proofhub

How important is a contingency plan in project management?

A smooth sail can turn into a storm at any moment; and if you are not armed with the prowess to withstand it, the entire mission could come to a standstill. A contingency plan can prepare you to successfully tackle unexpected circumstances.

“They often say that your Plan A should never need a Plan B. But in reality, you need Plan C, D, E, and F, just in case. Contingency is about worrying about problems today that carry the potential to drive you nuts tomorrow.”

Proofhub

How can you create an environment of accountability where the team takes responsibility for their actions and duly fulfils their assigned roles?

The first step in ensuring accountability in project management is clearly identifying project objectives and assigning responsibilities to team members accordingly. However, it is important to note that there is a difference between accountability and responsibility.

For instance, an individual who has been assigned to a specific task can be a responsible team member. Responsibility is shareable. An accountable team member is the ultimate decision-maker of a task.

Kashyap believes that empowering people with the necessary skills and resources to do their jobs will empower them to be responsible.

“Your aim should be to provide your people with the skills and resources needed to do their jobs, and then to create an environment where it’s easy for them to take responsibility for their decisions and actions.”

Vartika Kashyap

On the other hand, Proofhub highlighted that a clear understanding of the expectations of the project and the consequences of each individual’s responsibilities will create an environment of accountability.

“Responsibility is best understood when expectations are clear, and consequences are clearer. Show them the entire game set – the target, the dart, how to hit, and what happens when they miss.”

Proofhub

Creately posed a question as to “what happens when team members fall short in fulfilling their responsibilities?” In reply, Proofhub opined that the first step is to talk to the individual and consequently provide feedback on how the course of action needs to be changed.

“Your first step is to talk to the individuals concerned. Then provide feedback, so that the individuals know what needs to change. What you learn in your discussion provides the context for the next actions that you take.”

Proofhub

An uninvolved client can cause a lot of problems. How to improve stakeholder engagement and ensure that everyone’s on the same page?

Another key determinant of project success is stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder engagement is to seek the support and feedback of project stakeholders to ensure that its objectives are met.

Good stakeholder management includes a proper stakeholder analysis using a stakeholder register template to identify their requirements. Stakeholder engagement tends to be higher at the start of a project and decreases throughout the project’s progress. To avoid this, it is important to maintain constant communications with stakeholders via collaboration tools, remote communication tools, and so on.

“Give your clients min-by-min updates, the inside scoops, timely reports, and talk to them on a fixed schedule. Lure them into involvement and you’ll never need to turn the page on them. This is what our clients love about using ProofHub the most!”

Proofhub

Poorly defined goals and objectives could sink a project. How to set clear goals and success criteria to ensure project success?

You should always set SMART goals. The next step is to strategize a clear action plan to achieve these goals, within the project duration. Having such an action plan will deliver a clear understanding of who is responsible for what, with deadlines for each task.

“A clear goal is something that the client, the manager, and the employee – all can agree upon. The key is to not let anyone get ahead of themselves in the goal-setting meet.”

Proofhub

Sehdev reiterated that setting goals leads to defining objectives to achieve that goal. This will be your guiding light throughout the project.

“Setting a goal is inclined towards developing a proposal and then defining objectives that would help to achieve the goal. When you know your goals, you can define the objectives that is – the how, why, and what you need to do for project planning.”

Nandini Sehdev

Meanwhile, Kashyap underlined that the right mix of planning, controlling, and monitoring may determine how the project can be completed within its timeline and budget.

“The right mix of planning, controlling, and monitoring can make a difference in how project managers complete the project on time, on budget, and with high-quality results.”

Vartika Kashyap

How important is it to get the right Project Management Software?

The right project management software can enhance productivity and the efficiency of cross-functional teams. It makes communication faster, easier and assists the decision-making process.

To this end, Proofhub stressed that it is one of the most important decisions when it comes to conducting a project.

“By far, one of the most important decisions. Most teams are too late to realize how much they can improve with the right project management tool at their disposal. 85,000+ of our users would agree!”

Proofhub

What are the main factors to look into when buying a project management tool? An analysis of the project’s requirements and objectives set by the team will help you determine the project management software that works best for you.

“Know your challenges, so you can better outline your needs, understand how tools can help & define the criteria to evaluate tools.”

Proofhub

How to improve project team collaboration and build trust?

Communication is key in improving project collaboration and building trust. It is important to create an environment where team members can share knowledge and work together to overcome challenges.

“Share knowledge freely. Learn from one another. Shift workloads flexibly to break up unexpected bottlenecks, to help one another complete jobs and meet deadlines, and to share resources.”

Vartika Kashyap

Proofhub too, highlighted that better communication will result in better collaboration since everyone is allowed to share their ideas. 

“Collaboration is all about talking, and pep up the people from your team to express themselves. Managers need to encourage new ideas and let everyone express themselves freely. Better collaboration will ensue.”

Proofhub

Tools such as Creately can help you collaborate better, in real-time, even if you are working remotely. Such tools ensure smooth cross-functional collaboration.

Are there some icebreaker techniques that may be used to build trust?

“Transparency, offer trust to your team, ask for communication and feedback & respond to communication and feedback”

Proofhub

What factors should be considered when allocating resources to a project?

Effective resource allocation aims to assign scarce resources in the most appropriate and economical way possible. This responsibility often lies with the project manager to ensure that each resource is properly allocated and accounted for.

Further emphasizing the scarcity of resources, Kashyap mentioned that project management is about achieving more in less.

“Resource allocation in project management is all about achieving more in less. Analyze Your Project Scope Identify Resources Have A Backup Plan For Client Changes Divide Project Into Smaller Tasks”

Vartika Kashyap

Proofhub, on the other hand, stressed the importance of having a project management tool to make project management more efficient.

“Source availability Project skill requirements project goals Existing tasks at hand Project load While all of these are necessary, a smart project management tool can help you make these points less of a worry.”

Proofhub

You are bound to face unforeseen challenges and barriers when managing your project. What is important is that you are equipped with the right prowess and tools to overcome such challenges and complete the project successfully.