Building a Records Management Playbook, Part 2: The Playbook Structure

This was originally published as part of an ARMA Magazine article, "Build and Sustain Your Records Program with a Records Managemetn Playbook." 

Part 1: What's a Playbook?

Part 3: How to Build a Records Management Playbook

The records management playbook is intended to be self-contained; that said, there is a tradeoff between being comprehensive and being unwieldy, especially for an organization with a mature records management program. In that case, it makes sense to focus only on the plays, and move the other elements listed below into supporting documentation. It may even be worth breaking the playbook into two or more parts—for example, records management processes and records program processes.

Depending on how you build and publish your playbook, it may make more sense to link to your supporting documentation—the detailed procedures, checklists, flowcharts, standards, and anything else that supports a particular play.

The playbook will have three distinct parts: the introduction, the actual plays, and any appendices.

The Introduction

This entire part should be brief—no more than a page or two for each section, and shorter is better. Some organizations leave this section out entirely and make this content available as a separate, supporting document.

The introduction, if included, should set the stage for the playbook. It could include any of the following sections.

Introduction to the playbook. Much of this is included in Part 1. 

Introduction to the records management program. This should introduce your records management program: its purpose and how it supports organizational outcomes. It should also outline any unique aspects of how your records management program works within your organization—for example, unusual administrative or reporting requirements. Again, will often vary for different jurisdictions or industries.

Organizational context. This helps to orient new staff to the organization and the plays in the playbook. This section would include:

• Organizational mission. What does your organization do, and what does its legal and operational environment look like? These can help those reading the playbook to have some additional context over why the plays are the way they are. For example, a law firm’s records program must deal with client records, while a government agency’s may have to deal with Freedom of Information or open records-type requirements.
• Organizational culture. Is your organizational culture more focused on reducing and managing risk, or on accepting reasonable risks that are relatively low impact? Do you encourage people to be creative, or to follow directions closely? Again, these can shape the granularity and level of detail in your plays.
• Definition of roles and responsibilities. These are the roles involved in the execution of the records management program, directly and indirectly, and who would be included on a RACI (responsible, accountable, consult, inform) chart. A large and mature records management program might include the following individual roles: director of records management, records manager(s), records analysts, records coordinators. It might also include some sort of a steering committee. A smaller or less mature records management program might have a single person, with a non-records related title, or even be a part-time role. Indirect roles might include those with which records management team members need to collaborate, such as IT, or whose approval is required under certain circumstances such as Legal signing off on policy changes.

The Plays

There are hundreds of potential records management plays that could be included in a records management playbook, and there are certainly many more that would be unique to jurisdictions and industries. But as noted earlier, the playbook should contain the plays that the organization actually executes. It should not include such an exhaustive list of plays, many of which are not in place or even contemplated yet.

For a more mature records management program, it may make sense to group plays into categories, so they are easier to access and manage. Here are some broad categories of records management plays—but there are a couple of points to keep in mind. First, each of the categories below may include several to many individual plays.

Second, some of these categories may not seem specific to the records program, but the individual plays would. For example, plays under the decommissioning legacy systems category would focus on records appraisal, disposition of legacy records and information, and so forth.

Finally, this list does not include any standard management or project management plays, which are also necessary and may be part of the records management program, such as budgeting, defining business requirements, marketing and championing records management, records management system administration, and so forth.

Potential categories of records management plays for the playbook:

• Capturing and filing records
• Digitizing paper records
• Responding to requests for records
• Conducting records, information, system, and process inventories
• Developing metadata and classifications schemes
• Maintaining the records retention schedule
• Applying retention and disposition
• Reviewing and updating governance documents
• Migrating recordsDecommissioning legacy systems and user information stores
• Remediation of redundant, outdated, and trivial information
• Evaluating systems for records management capabilities
• Change management
• Assessing and auditing the records management program

Depending on your organization and approach, you might also include “records management-adjacent” plays such as privacy and data protection, e-discovery, archives, or document control.

The Appendices

Appendices can include anything that would be helpful to those using the playbook to sustain the records management program. For example, if your organization has conducted a maturity assessment, such as the one aligned to the ARMA Information Governance Implementation Model, the results could be included as an appendix. We mentioned earlier the possibility of including a full RACI chart, with contact information, as an appendix. A full list of references and resources might be helpful as well—not just organization-specific resources like policies and procedures, but also things like industry standards and reference works. A glossary and list of acronyms and abbreviations may also be of value.

The Structure of a Records Management Play

Each play should include several standard elements. This makes it easy to maintain them and to add new plays over time.

Name. This is the name of the play and should take the form of “verb-noun,” e.g., “Send Boxes to Offsite Storage.” Make sure that the name accurately describes the play using your organization’s terms.

Purpose. Why is this play in the playbook? What is the business value of executing this play?

Description. The overall description of what is required to execute the play. This should include enough information for someone new to be able to follow the steps in the play but should not necessarily be a fifty-nine-step checklist—rather, it should describe the intended outcomes. If there is a fifty-nine-step checklist, we can link to that in the references below.

Players or responsibilities. The play should identify the primary role responsible for executing the play. Since different plays will have different players, I like adding a mini-RACI chart for each play, and then rolling up all the individual RACIs into a full RACI chart either at the start of the playbook or as an appendix. It is up to you whether to include a point of contact—for maintenance purposes, it may be easier to include contact information as part of the full RACI chart if you create one.

Cadence. This refers to both the frequency of the execution of a play as well as the actual timing. For example, your “Send Boxes to Offsite Storage” play might be done every month, but only once a month, and only at the end of the month.

References. List all the things that can support the efficient and successful execution of a play: policies, procedures, guidelines, checklists, templates, standards, job aids, etc. If you can link to these so they are immediately available, even better; some ideas follow in the section on building the playbook.

Metrics. As the old management truism states, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Every play should have at least one metric that is relevant to how and why it is executed and that aligns to the overall goals of the organization. These should be quantifiable to the extent possible, and if you can get a financially quantifiable metric, that is even better.

Here is an example of an actual playbook play.

In the final post in this series, I'll look at how to actually build a RM playbook.