Sign Off

What is Sign Off?

Sign Off is a stage in your workflow where a proposed improvement is agreed to have been completed.

If you prefer not to have Sign Off in your organizaion: give all of your users enough permission to Sign Off improvements by themselves: this will mean that they can complete any improvement without having to ask for Sign Off.

Sign Off is an optional part of the improvement workflow

Each improvement goes through a series of steps that we call a workflow.

• It is created and becomes a “suggestion”
• A suggestion is approved and becomes “in progress”
• When progress is complete, if it requires Sign Off then it is marked for “Sign Off” by one or more approvers.
• If it is signed-off it becomes “completed”

Sign Off is therefore an optional declaration that “yes, I agree that this improvement has been completed”.

Note that at any point in the workflow, other options are available: an improvement can be “rejected” or “placed on hold”. Rejected is usually the end of an improvement: it just wasn’t required. On hold, is exactly that: you intend to complete this improvement one day when the time is right. Finally, someone who has been asked to Sign Off may also reject this request, potentially allowing for changes to be made before eventually signing-off.

Sign Off

Sign Off is a stage in the workflow above. It happens when the owner of an improvement thinks that it is complete and so requests approval for that. The choice of who makes this Sign Off is down to the organization: all that PDCA.software needs is that the person signing-off has a role that allows them to do that. If the person owning the improvement already has a role where they can Sign Off their own improvements, this step is optional.

Click on any in progress improvement, click Actions and choose the option Request Sign Off.

When you choose to “Request Sign Off” you can then choose one or more people from the dialogue to Sign Off this improvement. Choosing multiple people means that they will all need to Sign Off your improvement for it to be completed. If you enter notes in the “Completion Notes” field, people who sign off will see these in an email they receive about your request.

Once you have done this, you need to wait for your chosen people to Sign Off. You can remind them about the improvement by choosing the Action “Email someone about this improvement”.

Things to be aware of:

• As each person signs off, you will receive a notification. Once all of your chosen people have signed-off, the improvement will automatically become completed.
• You can change the person who you want to Sign Off of at any time: if someone has already signed-off and you change the second one, this does not require a new Sign Off.
• If you cancel Sign Off, the whole process starts again.