Practical models for technical communication - Shannon Kelley 2021
Why instructions and procedures matter
Instructions and procedures
Abstract: Some people mistakenly think that instructions and procedures are the same. Though these technical documents have similar parts, they have important differences, too. Instructions provide a series of detailed steps that define how to complete a task. Instructions exist so that the same actions can be repeated in the same order with the same result. Procedures, on the other hand, provide an overview of the best methods to accomplish a complex process. For both, technical communicators can benefit by focusing on how audience, message, and purpose interact. An essential step in creating effective instructions and procedures is usability testing. When you test a technical document, you can see how much the user understands, where you can make changes for greater usefulness, and how to avoid potential problems.
Looking Ahead
1. Why Instructions and Procedures Matter
2. Instructions
3. Procedures
4. Legal and Ethical Concerns
5. Usability Testing
Key Terms
” alternate steps
” anchoring
” exploded diagram
” fixed-order steps
” instructions
” nested steps
” procedures
” usability testing
” variable-order steps
Why instructions and procedures matter
Do you remember starting a new job? If you’re like most people, when you showed up for your first day of work, you didn’t know what to do. To whom do you report? What are you expected to know already? How do you record your hours? When is lunch? And most importantly, where is the bathroom? You didn’t walk through the door knowing all this. Someone had to teach you.
It’s normal to feel nervous about doing something unfamiliar, whether it’s starting a new job or using a new piece of technology. This is where the technical communicator can help. Technical communicators create instructions and procedures to guide people through a range of actions, from individual tasks such as assembling a bicycle to complex, large-scale projects, such as the crew procedures for a rocket launch. Both document types require intense focus on the end users so they can carry out a task with confidence.
Instructions and Procedures Defined
Instructions explain how you do something. Typically, instructions are written for an individual user to complete a short task. Instructions use short, simple sentences with lots of action verbs that tell a person exactly what to do one step at a time. Often instructions feature detailed images.
Consider a piece of furniture that requires assembly (figure 9.1). You need instructions to know what tools to use, what parts are required, and what pieces to assemble in what order. Ideally, instructions take you from a pile of screws and boards to a finished nightstand with a minimal amount of frustration or smashed fingers.
Figure 9.1. Detailed Instructions. This set of instructions tells the user what to do and what not to do. Courtesy of Sauder.
Procedures differ from instructions because they focus on the bigger picture and define roles and responsibilities. While instructions deal with how to accomplish a specific task, a procedure considers the larger questions of who needs to do the task and why they need to do it. Procedures are often collected into a manual or standard operating procedures (SOP). In figure 9.2, you can see the first page of a multipage document that begins with a policy and then defines the procedures for carrying out that policy for a government agency.
Figure 9.2. Policy and Procedures. This model shows the first page of a multipage procedural document.
You might encounter procedures in an employee manual in your workplace. Knowing how these documents function is beneficial. For example, many businesses have a procedure for reviewing employee performance. Such a procedure typically establishes how often an employee will be reviewed (annually, every six months, or every quarter), who will do the reviewing (the business owner or a department manager), the nature of the review (a test or an observation), the standard of assessment (points or pass/fail), and what will happen after the review (promotion, layoff, or continuing education).
In many ways, procedures help with decision-making, whereas instructions tell someone exactly what to do. While instructions are typically written for a single person, procedures are usually written for departments or even entire companies. Many procedures contain sets of instructions within them because an involved procedure often has multiple starting and stopping points. Take a look at this table that shows the main differences between instructions and procedures (figure 9.3).
Figure 9.3. Instructions and Procedures Compared. The differences between instructions and procedures become apparent in this chart when you consider the duration, audience, message, and purpose for each.
