glossary
SOP vs Work Instruction: What's the Difference?
A short, useful explanation of how SOPs differ from work instructions, with examples of each.
A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) documents the policy, roles, and high-level steps of a process. A Work Instruction is the detailed how-to for one specific task within that process. SOPs answer "what and who"; work instructions answer "how".
Examples
- SOP: "Handling a refund request" — defines purpose, roles, and 6 high-level steps.
- Work Instruction: "Issuing a refund in Stripe Dashboard" — exact clicks, screenshots, edge cases.
- SOP: "Onboarding a new customer." Work Instruction: "Setting up SSO in the customer's Okta tenant."
Related terms
SOP
Work instruction
Process documentation
Runbook
Playbook
Frequently asked questions
Put this into practice
Track every step, assign teammates, and ship faster.