This originally appeared as an article on the ARMA Magazine website on 9/26/2022, Build and Sustain Your Records Program with a Records Management Playbook.
Part 1: What's a Playbook?
Part 2: The Playbook Structure
The actual process of building a playbook is fairly straightforward. The two key challenges are in determining what plays to include and what platform to build it on.
Determining What Plays to Include
As noted throughout this series, the plays in your records management playbook should include only those that you execute regularly. But responsibilities and documentation are often scattered across roles and information stores.
First, start by reviewing any existing documentation of your records management processes—SOPs, flowcharts, procedures, etc.
Next, review any reports or other paperwork that you generate on a regular basis. These will often help to inform the metrics as well.
You should also review any existing job aids—checklists, glossaries/lists of terms or acronyms, naming convention cheat sheets, and so forth. Do not overlook the records policy and retention schedule—while these are the source of a few plays themselves, the retention schedule in particular often documents other records management-related tasks that result in the creation of records.
Look at job descriptions for the roles on the records management team—but make sure to compare them to the work that the members of the team are doing. Performance reviews can offer value as well, by identifying current expectations and priorities and potential gaps.
Finally, if you are just starting this process, a note of caution. Records management textbooks are a rich source of information, but they could lead you to developing and including many plays that you are just not doing. This can call the value of the playbook into question.
Where Should You Build Your Playbook?
Playbooks can be built as Word-type documents, as spreadsheets, or as PowerPoint-type presentations. There are tools designed for playbooks and similar types of authoring. A wiki can be a great way to build a playbook—each play is its own article, with links to related plays and to all the references and supporting materials.
But the platform and its attendant capabilities do not matter as much as the answers to these questions:
- What platform is easiest to access and use for those who will be using the playbook?
- What platform is easiest for the team to maintain the playbook?
If users cannot use it, or if the team cannot maintain it, it will become shelf ware just like the traditional SOP manual.
Who Should Build the Playbook?
You! Well, you and any other subject matter experts who can describe the plays and their individual components. Again, in smaller organizations or records management programs this might be the single person running the program; in a larger organization or with a broader playbook, you will need to identify the right people to weigh in.
You will certainly also want to reach out to anyone identified as having a records management responsibility (e.g., through the RACI chart) who is not a formal member of the records management team.
Maintaining the Playbook
We have stressed throughout this series that the playbook is a living document that needs regular care and feeding to remain relevant and useful. Change is a constant; changes to technology, changes to legal or regulatory requirements, and changes to how the organization does business all require that the playbook be regularly reviewed and updated. In fact, reviewing the playbook should be a play in your playbook!
When the team finds out about a change that will impact a play, someone should be assigned to update the play with a timeline. Similarly, if the team determines a need for a new play, it should be assigned and scheduled. For example, developing a retention schedule the first time is a project. But reviewing and maintaining it are plays; once the retention schedule is finalized, those plays should be defined and added to the playbook.
Conclusion
A playbook is a great way to take your program to the next level. It takes some work up front to ensure that it is complete and accurately reflects the way your program works today, but once you have it, you will never look back!
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