Procedurer

Procedurer is the plural form of procedure in several Scandinavian languages, including Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. It refers to formal sequences of actions that specify how tasks should be carried out to achieve a defined result. A procedure describes who should act, in what order, under which conditions, and what inputs and outputs are involved. The purpose is to promote consistency, quality, safety, and compliance, and to enable training, auditing, and continuous improvement. Procedures are distinct from policies: policies state principles or rules, while procedures provide the concrete steps to implement them.

Procedurer are used across many domains. In business and administration, examples include invoice processing, hiring, and procurement; in manufacturing, equipment maintenance and changeover procedures; in safety-critical contexts, emergency evacuation and lockout procedures; in information technology, incident response and backup procedures; in healthcare, patient admission and medication administration.

A well-designed procedure typically includes: purpose and scope; roles and responsibilities; step-by-step instructions; required inputs and expected outputs; handling of exceptions and errors; references to related documents; and revision history. They should be clear, concise, current, accessible to those who need them, and validated through testing or pilot use. Procedures are often maintained in a controlled document system and versioned so changes are traceable.

Relation to standards: many organizations base procedures on quality management or safety standards (for example, ISO 9001 or industry-specific regulations) that mandate documented procedures for traceability and accountability. In information technology, the term procedure can also refer to a subroutine or stored procedure in software development; runbooks document operational steps for systems administration. The balance is to keep procedures practical and usable, avoiding unnecessary complexity while ensuring reliable performance.