Procedure
Sub cut the process into its parts. Each part has a clear edge, an owner and a done-state, and each meets the next at a seam. What a part does not yet have is its inside: the work that happens between the moment it starts and the moment it is done. That is where Procedure works.
A procedure is the ordered steps inside one part. It says what starts the part and what must be in hand before it begins, which steps the work takes and in what order, where it branches and on which rule, which role does each step, and where it ends. It sits one rung below Sub on the ladder and one rung above Guides. Procedure lays out the steps. Guides shows how a single step is done well.
A clear procedure can be followed by anyone in the role, on any day, with the same result. A procedure that lives in one person's head works only while that person is there. That is why every step goes to a role, never to a named person. The Roles block below names whoever fills it: the Performer, who performs the steps.
The volume works in four moves: start, order, decide and finish. Each discipline designs one piece of a procedure, and the last puts them together.
Think Simple.
A Procedure
The Trigger
The Steps
The Order
Decisions
Who Does It
The Finish
The Procedure
Roles
Owner
Owns the end to end of their area. The decision rights and the full responsibility are theirs, at any level, in any place.
Leader
Leads, and can design a part, but does not own the end to end. (If they did, we would call them the Owner.)
Designer
Designs the part in focus, an Owner across their area, or a Leader within their part. Designing is what owning and leading ask of you.
Stakeholder
Holds a stake in the process.
Challenger
Challenges, and brings something to work with. The point may be right. Engage it.
Performer
Performs the steps.
Refuser
Refuses, and brings nothing to work with, at any level. Look first for a root. If there is none, the way past is above them.
The Example
The company is the same one you met in the Rules, the System, Core and Sub: a software company that sells subscriptions. In Core, its core was deepened from its direction (subscribe, activate, deliver, verify) down to its backbone. In Sub, activation was cut into its parts: settling the payment first, because nothing else in activation can begin without it, then opening the account, with the entitlement recorded in the same part.
This volume opens one of those parts: opening the account. In the System, an order form that added nothing was cut from activation, and activation became two days faster. That was a decision on the map. Procedure works a rung lower, inside the part, where the question is which steps belong there at all.
Opening the account starts when a settled payment arrives across the seam from settling, with the customer and the plan. The first step is the check on arrival: are the customer and the plan present and valid? One decision follows. If the email address is already in use, the case goes back to settling by the way back, rather than waiting in a queue. Then the account is opened and the entitlement is recorded against it. Recording the entitlement has to wait, because it needs the account to exist. The part ends at its done-state: an account open, with the entitlement recorded against it.
Across the eight disciplines, the same procedure is built piece by piece, from the trigger to the finish. By the end, anyone in the role can follow it. It stays inside its part, honours its seams and is ready for Guides to show how each step is done well.
Procedure is built on the Rules, the Exceptions, the System, Core and Sub. It applies the rules the Rules taught, and it sends a true exception down the route the Exceptions built. It works inside one box of the System's map, below Core's backbone and inside one of the parts Sub cut.
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Think Simple.
