 •The doctor surprised me when he told me that he had used a new procedure to repair the tear in the tendon of my leg.•In a work place that has complex interactions among employees, it is important to specify and implement a procedure for core processes.In telecommunications, a SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) is specifically designed to describe and guide multiple iterations of the same procedure over a broad number of locations, on multiple occasions, and over an open period of time until such SOP is updated or discontinued.