Understanding The Health Check: Phase 5: Workflow – Questions

Are your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) built into your computer system?

If you have not achieved Phase 5, your team draws on their personal experience and decides what practices they will follow.
As you progress with Phase 5, your experts will have produced written/electronic SOPs and distributed them to your teams.
Achieving Phase 5 means that your SOPs are built into your system as templates that can be updated.
These updates are automatically rolled out to jobs for operators to work from.

Do you have up-to-date Standard Operating Procedures?

Our SOPs are available for all operational staff, but infrequently updated
Our SOPs are available and frequently updated, but new versions are not instantly followed;
Our SOPs are 'built-in,' following them is second nature and updates are instantly used

If you have not achieved Phase 5, you might have SOPs, but find that your people use their own judgement of what is important to do rather than follow the SOPs.
As you progress with Phase 5, your people will follow the SOPs more and more, but you will often find that some people are following old versions of the SOPs.
Achieving Phase 5 means that the SOPs in use are always the most up-to-date versions, and the mechanism by which tasks are released are automatically aligned and updated to match these SOPs.

Can your built-in workflows have branching and conditional execution?

The SOPs are generic and linear
We can put branches and extra tasks into the SOPs, and just delete what's not required on the fly
Yes our built-in SOPs can contain branches and conditional elements

If you have not achieved Phase 5, your SOPs are fixed procedures that handle the majority of jobs, but you find that the SOPs do not contain procedures for everything.
As you progress with Phase 5, your SOPs become more complex and contain SOP branches for handling of the special cases.
- However, your operators must check and correct the SOP selection to ensure the right SOP branch is followed.
Achieving Phase 5 means that your SOPs are set up to allow for exceptions, with the job automatically presenting the operator the correct SOP branch for the situation.

Can SOPs adjust themselves to accommodate special cases?

We cannot handle variations and edge cases in the SOPs
We put special case tasks into the SOPs, and just delete what's not required on the fly
We can build edge-case or variations of SOPs, and the system automatically chooses the right ones

If you have not achieved Phase 5, your SOPs are not followed when it comes to variations and edge cases.
- Your people rely on their judgement for these cases.
As you progress with Phase 5, your people are able to select from your SOPs the right procedure for the given job and delete or cancel the other procedures that are not applicable.
Achieving Phase 5 means that your system uses automations and rules to test each job and select for the operators the best procedure to follow.

Can SOPs adjust the data entry requirements, to help users capture the right data?

No, all fields are standardised for all job types
All fields are standardised within job types, but can vary between types
We can add customised fields to SOPs (e.g. to capture extra data based on job types and job characteristics)

If you have not achieved Phase 5, your SOPs will present your operators with data fields to fill in that are irrelevant to the job.
- Sometimes, your people will leave these blank, other times they will hunt for the answer to put in and other times they will put something/anything in so that they can proceed.
As you progress with Phase 5, your data entry screens will contain all fields, but the operators will be guided as to which are relevant and must be completed.
Achieving Phase 5 means that each SOP can have customised data fields and that the system only presents the fields the operators needs to action.