Operations audit playbook: finding the constraint in two weeks

Scope it before you start

Audit one flow end to end, not the whole company. The right first flow is the one closest to revenue that people complain about most: lead to closed deal, order to delivery, or ticket to resolution. A whole-company audit produces a document; a single-flow audit produces changes.

Days 1 to 3 — Trace real work

1. Pick five recent units

   Real records, mixed outcomes — two that went well, two that went badly, one still open. Averages hide the failure pattern you are looking for.

2. Build the timeline for each

   Every state change, system touch and handoff, with timestamps. Record who did what and, more importantly, where it waited.

3. Separate touch time from wait time

   In most flows, wait time is over eighty percent of elapsed time. Effort improvements move the small number; queue and ownership fixes move the large one.

4. Note every unwritten decision

   Anywhere a person applied judgement that is not documented. These are your future inconsistency and your future automation blockers.

Days 4 to 6 — Interview along the flow

Three to six short conversations, one per role in the flow. Four questions each, always the same four:

1. What arrives at you, and what is usually missing from it?
2. What do you do when it is missing?
3. What do you spend time on that you think is unnecessary?
4. When something goes wrong here, who finds out, and how?

Days 7 to 9 — Test the system claims

• Pick five in-flight items and ask who owns each. Time how long the answer takes.
• Open the SOP for two steps and check its last-reviewed date against reality.
• Ask two people to describe the same step separately and compare.
• Check whether the exception you would most want to catch is visible anywhere today.
• Confirm whether the reporting used in the weekly meeting comes from the system of record or a spreadsheet.

Days 10 to 12 — Rank and assign

Produce one table, not a deck. Every row is a specific defect with an owner and a size. Rank by throughput impact first, then by effort.

Days 13 to 14 — Agree the sequence

Pick no more than three fixes for the first month. Sequence them so the measurement fix comes first — you need the instrument before you can prove the rest worked. Book the review date in the same session, or the list ages.

Related work

The discipline is described in business operations. If the audit finds capacity as the binding constraint, continue with growth is breaking operations; if it finds boundary failures, continue with work leaks between teams.