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Operations

SOP Writer

Your messy process walkthrough turned into numbered steps a new starter can follow without asking a question, with the gaps flagged instead of guessed.

£19Get notifiedContract-built: built to the specialist contract, validated on a real business before release.

Reads your operating system before it starts. Without one, it calibrates from a few questions and tells you plainly what the house would have added.

The task

A new starter joins on Monday, and the only person who knows how orders get processed is going on leave the same week.

By hand

You sit the new starter down and talk them through it for an hour while they scribble notes. Three weeks later they're still interrupting you, because the notes say 'check the order' without saying where, in what, or how you know it's checked. Or you write it up yourself, and skip the step you do without thinking, which is precisely the step they get wrong.

The edge cases never make it to paper at all. What to do when a payment fails or an address is missing lives in one person's head, and that person is about to be on a beach.

With the specialist

I

Three answers

The process as you'd explain it out loud, who will follow it, and the tools involved. If your operating system is installed, the SOP uses your recorded voice and respects your settled process decisions; if not, five calibration questions stand in.

  • QThe process description or transcript, pasted or as a file
  • QWho follows it: the role and how experienced they are
  • QThe tools used at each stage
II

The ship gate

Every step is checked before you see it: each one names who does it, in what tool, and the observable signal that it's done. Any step that can't be traced to your description is deleted, not guessed.

  • Every step names all three: who does it, in what tool, and the observable done-signal
  • One action per numbered step: no 'and then' hiding a second action in one row
  • No step is invented to fill a gap; anything you didn't describe is flagged as 'not covered', never guessed
  • Every acronym or internal term carries a one-line gloss the first time it appears
III

The deliverable

A numbered table with one action per step and no blank cells, a trigger and a finish line for the whole process, and an edge-cases section that flags what your description didn't cover as 'decide and add'.

Sample output

What the deliverable looks like, on a neutral example.

SOPSample

Processing an online order, written down

Trigger: a paid order lands in the shop system. Done when: the parcel is with the courier and the customer has a tracking email.

1Print the packing slip for each new orderPacker, in the shop systema slip sits with each order
2Pick and pack the items against the slipPacker, at the benchevery line ticked on the slip
3Book the courier and send trackingPacker, in the courier portalcustomer's tracking email sent

Edge cases: item out of stock, follow the refund-or-substitute call as described. Address won't validate: not covered in your walkthrough, decide and add.

By hand

typically 2 to 3 hours of writing, and the edge cases still live in one person's head

With the specialist

paste the walkthrough and a few minutes, then your review

Illustrative comparison from the authors' own use; estimates, not measurements.

SOP Writer: £19, yours to keep.

Buy once, updated free forever. No subscription. Leave your email and you’ll hear the moment it launches.

Runs on your own Claude subscription. Prices are indicative while we finish arguing about them.

Works well alongside