The Publications app helps to improve team collaboration, provides guidance, and supports team performance by making information easily accessible in a common location.
It's well-known that maintaining accurate and organized documentation is considered to be one of the best ways to avoid chaos and keep things efficient and consistent. That's where documenting processes comes into action, to provide guidance on how tasks are executed from start to finish. It describes the steps to follow in order to streamline activities in alignment with what's expected in the organization.
Put simply, processes ensure that the right things get done by the right people at the right time!
Benefits of having processes
Having processes in place in your organization is beneficial for:
Optimization & consistency
It allows identifying inefficiencies. By assessing which processes need improvement, new process solutions emerge to boost efficiency, saving time and resources.
Sharing knowledge
It's crucial to keep a trace of processes known only to a few people. Without it, when someone leaves, process knowledge usually leaves with them. This type of documentation allows knowledge to be recorded and shared with members of the organization to improve collaboration, transparency and help people move forward when changes occur.
Training & Onboarding
Internal documentation helps new members understand their role(s), what's expected of them, how the organization works and to get familiar with the processes they’ll be involved in. Transparency makes onboarding as easy as it can be!
In summary, process documentation is valuable for 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.
Step-by-step: create process documentation
If you're starting with a blank slate and no processes are in place within your organization, you'll probably have to go through what is called process discovery. Involving members part of the process will help to determine what's crucial and what realistically works!
🎯 Step 1: Define the “why” and “how”
Define which process needs to be documented by finding its purpose and its scope : determine why and how the process will benefit the organization. Establish what should be the desired outcome and list down what resources are needed to carry out each of the steps.
📝 Step 2: Establish the steps
Gather all information on process steps from start to finish and identify the starting point. Once you have established that, the rest will naturally follow when asking the right question! What happens next? Who does this? How do you know when it’s completed?
🙋 Step 3: Who is involved?
Decide which member(s), role or circle will be responsible for carrying out the process tasks. It's important for people to know who does what for the process to be purposeful and efficient.
💬 Step 4: Make it bulletproof
Identify and anticipate where risks could occur and add control points to help monitor the process. Establishing measurements to determine its effectiveness will help improve it.
✅ Step 5: Review and test
Gather everyone involved and review the process you’ve documented. Once it's set up and agreed on, test the process and see if you’ve missed anything!
How does Publications help with process documentation?
Having processes documented in your organization is beneficial only if they are kept up-to-date, read and carried out. The Publications app helps to ensure that the time you invest in documenting processes is not wasted by making it easy for members to find what they're looking for, take part in shaping processes and collaborating on them!
The Publications app allows:
👉 Easy access and searchability
All documents can be found in one place, easy to find with colour-coded categories and filters.
👉 Active collaboration
Collaborate with your teammates in real time to draft and edit documents, both during meetings or asynchronously. Leave comments and open communication to work productively on what's important.
👉 Make it interesting
Because a picture is worth a thousand words, personalize your documents with images and build its structure freely.
👉 Keep it up to date
Set review dates and access each document's activity log to know who worked on it, what was done and when.
👉 Request formal approval from your team
Use consent decision-making through asynchronous proposals for your team to quickly review and approve the changes made to documents.