Case: An SOP audit that retired 14 dead docs and raised checklist use to 88%

Case: An SOP audit that retired 14 dead docs and raised checklist use to 88%

A team had 40 process docs but buyers ignored most because half were stale. A quarterly audit runbook pruned the library and made the rest trusted.

Run this once per quarter on the full SOP library.

Stage 1 — Inventory (Owner: ops)
☐ List every SOP with last-updated date + owner
☐ Flag any not opened in 90 days (use doc analytics)

Stage 2 — Triage (Owner: each SOP owner)
☐ Keep, update, or archive each flagged doc
☐ Every kept SOP must have a named owner

Stage 3 — Verify (Owner: ops)
☐ Spot-run 3 SOPs end-to-end, fix broken steps
☐ Re-link the SOP index, remove archived entries

Trigger: quarter start.
Done-when: every SOP is current-or-archived with an owner.

Result: 40 docs trimmed to 26; measured checklist-follow rate rose from 52% to 88%.

Save this. Run it every time.