How to Organize a Clean, Concise Process Guide

No matter what job or industry you may work in, chances are that you will be asked at some point to create help document for a specific process. It could be for anything as simple as how to work a cash register at a fast food restaurant or as complex as how a car is assembled from end-to-end.

As good as somebody may be at executing that process, many people struggle to share that knowledge in a clear, concise way. Oftentimes, there may far too much wording bunched together. Or it is ambiguous when to go to the next step. Or multiple roles may be involved, but you're just not sure who is involved at each step. The list of these confusions and ambiguities can go on for days.

I'm a pretty meticulous guy. As one who appreciates fine design even within things like corporate help documents, I have spent several years refining the way I create process guides, and I think I have cracked the code on creating truly helpful process guides. As a guy who wants to see you succeed, I'm glad to share what I've learned with you!
Before we get into it, I do wish I could show you an example of what I've done, but all my examples were completed for my employer. I don't know whether or not I can share those, so to be on the safe side, I have purposefully not included them. If you have anything you'd like clarified below, leave a comment on this post, and I'll be glad to answer it for you and everybody else to see.

I like to follow a high level guideline when creating my process guides lined out in the bullets below. We'll delve into each of these in more detail. At the end of this post, I'll provide a few other one-off tips, so be sure to stick around until the end!

• Document Objective(s) / Scope
• Introduction to the Process
• Body of the Document (aka the Process Steps)
• References

Document Objective(s) / Scope

I begin my process guides with a brief 2-3 sentence summary of what the guide covers and, equally important, what the guide does NOT cover. The latter part is especially important because I have spent a lot of time combing through certain process guides looking for something that ended up being in a different process guide. This helps your reader to set expectations on what they will be learning and also cautions them to not waste their time looking for something that is not covered.

So, for example, if I were to write an objective / scope statement for a guide to making a PBJ sandwich, it might look something like this: "This guide covers the process of creating the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The guide does not cover how to make a peanut butter and banana sandwich, nor does it cover how to make a bologna sandwich." (I know that's a bit obscure, but I think you get the picture!)

Introduction to the Process

Like the introduction to any good book or scholarly article, this is where you delve a little more into describing what the document contains at a high level. Where the document objective / scope statement is only 2-3 sentences, the introduction may be 2-3 paragraphs.

Directly following the introductory paragraphs, I like to bullet out all the steps that will be covered in more detail throughout the guide. Moreover, I try to make it easy on my readers by adding hyperlinked bookmarks to quickly jump to a specific step in the document. (To do this in MS Word, check out this link.)

Body of the Document (aka the Process Steps)

If there is one thing I want you to take away from this post, remember this word: CONSISTENCY. Consistency helps to set readers expectations on what they should be looking for at each step in the process.

That said, I organize all my steps utilizing this same format below. Even if you find that one of the items below isn't relevant for a specific step, I still list it and mark it as "Not Applicable" (N/A) for that step. This way, your reader isn't scratching their heads wondering if they missed something.

Here's my recommended format:

• Overview of the Step
• Resources Involved
• Action Items
• When to Move to Next Step

Overview of the Step - This provides your reader with a basic understanding of what they're doing in this step and, more importantly, why this step is important to the process. (If you yourself can't explain why a step is needed, ask yourself if that step is needed at all.)

Resources Involved - This can range from items you'll need to people involved. Many processes include the involvement of multiple teams but only at specific points in the process. If you document this within every step, your reader will understand when is the appropriate time to include another person / team or when to use a certain tool. This level detail is undervalued, in my opinion, so please don't skip it!!

Action Items - This is probably the piece everybody is most familiar with. These are the actions that are taken within that step of the process. The action items may be sequential, or they may be free to complete in any order. A tip to help differentiate this is to specifically number items completed in a sequential order or use just a regular bullet to denote something that can be done whenever.

When to Move to Next Step - I know that to some people, it seems obvious that you move to the next step once all the action items are completed. That may not be true. For example, if you have optional action items, it may not be so clear to the reader when to move on. My suggestion is to always provide a clear explanation of when it is okay for the reader to move to the next step.

References

The final thing I like to include is a list of other referential documents the reader may want to consult. This is especially important in large organizations where many processes are linked together. You don't want to reinvent the wheel and line out every single process. Instead, provide some frames of reference your reader can consult in this section.

Utilizing my super obscure PBJ example, this is the place where you may reference process guides created for peanut butter and banana sandwiches or bologna sandwiches. (Apparently, I'm hungry...)

Bonus Tips!

The tips below are other things that I do that I would seriously take into consideration when creating a process guide. Not all of them may be relevant for every process, so use your best judgment on when to include these.

• Everybody loves pictures - If you can provide screenshots or photos of what something should look like at a given step, do it. I personally like to create a visual graphic of the steps so that the reader has a visual representation of where they're at in the process.
• Two words: WHITE SPACE - Don't try to cram as much information as you can on a single page. People appreciate white space, and your reader is much more likely to breeze over important information if it is embedded deeply amongst a ton of other information. My general rule of thumb is to dedicate one full page per step.
• Be liberal with your hyperlinks - I shared that you should create a "References" page for this sort of item, but I am also not afraid to include hyperlinks wherever I feel is appropriate. For example, if I truly was creating a PBJ process guide, I would stick a link to the peanut butter and banana process guide right there in the objective / scope statement.
• Mind your formatting - If you've noticed throughout this post, I have used bold headings, italicized headings, spacing, and bullets frequently throughout. Your readers appreciate this, so definitely keep this in mind as you create a process guide.

That's it! I hope you learned a lot in this post. Trust me when I say that I wish I had learned this stuff four years ago. And again, these steps are applicable for any job in any industry. Don't think that because I work in my job that it can't work for you. It can!

Happy trails as you go forth and create your process guides. :)