Standard Operating Procedures

One of the things that I did manage to accomplish last week was putting together a guide to writing a standard operating procedure (SOP).* It was a good exercise and the initial result should contribute to making the AMPATH ISC more organized and ordered. There is a great deal of tacit knowledge here and we need to make that information more formal or explicit.

* I mentioned previously about not knowing where to start things. I do not want to give the impression that nothing has been started.  We have started the process of identifying current IT projects, planning new IT and IT management projects and are working to revamp the IT procurement process. As we embark on just these few things, we find other areas that need attention. And those other areas reveal additional things. I guess it is like painting, if you paint one room, you then notice that the floors need to be redone, the other rooms need work to.  

Establishing SOPs is just one thing being introduce to help meet the day-to-day operations challenges at AMPATH. Other things on the list include implementing more standard project management practices, change management and service management.* No truth to the reports of implementing TPS Reports.

* It would be nice to do a full ITIL implementation**, but I don't fully understand what that entails and from what little I do know, I think it is a too big an enchilada to try all at once.  


** The Information Technology Infrastructure Library, a nice set of best practices and a bit of a rage these days.  Also of interest (and the subject of a future post) is the concept of Enterprise Architecture.

The plan now is to distribute the SOP guide to the rest of the team for feedback and comments.*  And begin testing the guide on some simple SOPs. The feedback and comments along with the testing should help make for a good first version of the guide. I have stressed continuously here at AMPATH and in my previous position that such documents should be considered living and be open to revision.

* Our own little RFC (Request for Comments). It is always worth sharing, the hope is that the feedback will make things stronger.

Why there were no such guidelines in place is a topic for another time. Maybe next time. For now, I have to get ready for work.