Attributable is part of ALCOA that tells us that it should be possible to identify the individual or computerized system that performed the recorded task. The need to document who performed the task / function, is in part to demonstrate that the function was performed by trained and qualified personnel. This applies to changes made to records as well: corrections, deletions, changes, etc.
This means that records should be signed and dated using a unique identifier that is attributable to the author. Where author means the individual who created or recorded the data.
Understanding what role the individual is playing in the task is critical. There are basically six: Executor, Preparer, Checker, Verifier, Reviewer and Approver.
Written procedures with their step-by-step breakdown are a fundamental tool for ensuring quality through consistent execution of the work. As a standardized guideline for tasks, procedures serve many additional purposes: basis of training, ensuring regulatory requirements are met, ensuring documentation is prepared and handled correctly.
As written prescriptions of how work is to be performed, they can be based on abstract and often decontextualized expectations of work. The writers of the procedures are translating Work-as-Imagined. As a result, it is easy to write from a perspective of ideal and stable conditions for work and end up ignoring the nuances introduced by the users of procedures and the work environment.
The day-to-day activities where the procedures are implemented is Work-as-Done. Work-is-Done is filled with all the factors that influence the way tasks are carried out – spatial and physical conditions; human factors such as attention, memory, and fatigue; knowledge and skills.
Ensuring that our procedures translate from the abstraction of Work-as-Imagined to the realities of Work-as-Done as closely as possible is why we should engage in step-by-step real-world challenge as part of procedure review.
Work-as-Prescribed gives us the structure to take a more dynamic view of workers, the documents they follow, and the procedural and organizational systems in which they work. Deviations from Work-as-Prescribed point-of-view are not exclusively negative and are an ability to close the gap. This is a reason to closely monitor causes such as “inadequate procedure” and “failure to follow procedure” – they are indicators of a drift between Work-as-Prescribed and Work-as-Done. Management review will often highlight a disharmony with Work-As-Imagined.
The place where actions are performed in real-world operations is called, in safety thinking, the sharp-end. The blunt-end is management and those who imagine work, such as engineers, removed from doing the work.
Our goal is to shrink the gap between Work-as-Imagined and Work-as-Done through refining the best possible Work-as-Prescribed and reduce the differences between the sharp and the blunt ends. This is why we stress leadership behaviors like Gemba walks and ensure a good document change process that strives to give those who use procedure a greater voice and agency.
A task is the steps for doing a particular piece of work.
Procedure are activities made up of a series of tasks.
A process is an upper level description of a series of activities required to accomplish an objective. Processes are made up of procedures or tasks. They have inputs and outputs.
Process
Procedure
Task
Flow of sequences of activities that transform input elements into results
Specific and required way to carry out a process
Describe the correct steps to perform a specific task
What we do By Whom Where it takes place When it happens
How the work must be performed
How to accomplish a specific task within a process with very detailed directions
Orchestration the work
Mandatory method
Mandatory guidance
Can link to 0, 1 or more procedures
It may consist of 0, 1 or more task instructions
Focus on the instructions of 1 task
Transversal by business units
Cross functional or only 1 business unit
Only 1 business unit
Participate more than one role
Participate more than one role
Participate only one role
Encapsulates activities
Explains how to do but doesn’t get to all the details of how it is done
All of the detail of all the steps to follow in an activity
Provides the workflow model at the highest level using BPMN
Document with both narrative and images, usually in the form of use cases and workflow diagrams
Document with the maximum detail that explains step by step the instructions that must be carried out in an activity
