A public test by Management Systems International
The 12-Day ISO Documentation Challenge
The documentation phase is where ISO projects stall. Not the audit, not the standard, not the registrar — the writing. MSI is testing whether that phase still has to take months.
Still being finalized. This page describes a field test MSI is designing in the open. Dates, cohort details, the procedure sequence, the scoring instrument and the participation terms may all change before the start date. Nothing on this page is an offer, and nothing here binds MSI or any applicant — the terms that govern participation are the ones set out in the written participation agreement signed before a start date is confirmed.
The condition, stated up front
Nobody is writing from a blank page
The template condition is not a footnote. It is the point.
Each participating company works from a complete directional template and guide package built to its standard — the judgment calls already made and explained, and the decisions that are genuinely theirs marked, and no more numerous than they need to be.
Twelve days is not a claim about writing eleven procedures from scratch. Nobody does that in twelve days, and MSI would not ask anyone to try.
It is a claim about what twelve days buys when the hard thinking is already written down — when the only work left is the work that is actually yours.
Why MSI is running this in public
The template line has no independent proof behind it. Six documented before-and-after results, scored on a fixed instrument and published whatever they say, is a stronger argument than any copy MSI can write.
The packages under test are MSI's ISO Procedure Templates and Guides — the same documents anyone can buy, with nothing added for the cohort.
Results publish either way. If twelve days turns out to be insufficient, that publishes too. Findings are reported anonymized by sector, size and standard — no company names, no logos. Named quotes, if any, are requested after results are in and are never a condition of selection.
The cohort
Six companies. Two on each standard.
Six is the number MSI can properly support during the window. It is a support capacity, not a countdown.
ISO 9001
Eleven procedures plus an assembly day. A quality manual is optional, off the clock, and does not count toward the score.
ISO 13485
Eleven procedures plus assembly. Clause 4.2.2 mandates a quality manual by name, so day 12 is assembly plus manual — an asymmetry disclosed in the published results.
ISO 7101
Thirteen procedures plus assembly — fourteen days. Evaluation of compliance and emergency preparedness insert after day 8.
Certification status is not a filter. A certified organization rebuilding a stale system and an uncertified organization building its first one are both eligible. Status is recorded as a variable and reported separately.
The ISO 9001 places write to the 2026 edition from day 1. ISO 9001:2026 publishes on 16 September 2026 and starts the transition clock for every certified organization. Both ISO 9001 participants receive MSI's ISO 9001:2026 procedure template and guide package at no charge.
The schedule is built around that. The standard publishes on 16 September, the updated package takes about three weeks to build, and the cohort starts on 26 October — so the ISO 9001 companies write to the current edition rather than writing to 2015 and transitioning afterward. That sequencing is why the start date sits in late October.
Eligibility
Who this is for, and who it is not
A fit if
- Three or more years operating, with revenue stable or growing across three years
- One or two named people who will do the reading and the marking up
- A named executive sponsor who will put their name on a company-wide notice
- A real starting gap — a company already at 90% documented proves nothing
- Willing to return a written day-30 report and sit a 30-minute recorded debrief
Not a fit
- Consultants, advisory firms, or anyone who would adapt the package for client engagements
- Template resellers
- Under three years operating, or revenue not stable or growing across three years
- No named executive sponsor
- Already holds the MSI package for that standard
Grant terms. Challenge packages are granted, not purchased. The half day of consulting offered to early buyers, and the 100% credit toward SurePath, SureResults or consulting, apply to purchases only and are not included in this grant. The license is single-organization: no redistribution, no resale.
The work
Twelve days, in the order they are written
The sequence is not arbitrary. Procedures that govern other procedures are written first, so nothing downstream has to be revised to match.
| Day | Procedure | Why it sits here |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Document and Records Control | Governs everything after it, and teaches the sixteen-section architecture |
| 2 | Risk and Opportunities | Feeds most of what follows |
| 3 | Nonconformity, Corrective Action and Continual Improvement | Produces an input leadership needs |
| 4 | Leadership, including Management Review | Governance decided early, then governs the rest |
| 5 | Human Resource Management | Competence gates every other process |
| 6 | Purchasing and Supplier Control | |
| 7 | Sales Management / Service User Access | Carries the contingency path |
| 8 | Production Management / Operational Control | Carries the contingency path |
| 9 | Control of Measuring and Monitoring | |
| 10 | Customer Satisfaction / Service User Experience | |
| 11 | Internal Audit | |
| 12 | Assembly — and the quality manual for ISO 13485 | Turns eleven documents into a package |
ISO 7101 inserts Evaluation of Compliance and Emergency Preparedness after day 8, running fourteen days. Design and Development is an optional track for any standard and adds five days. Contingency is not a separate procedure — every MSI procedure carries exception and contingency paths as a numbered section, and the exposure sits inside Sales Management and Production Management.
Assembly day is not filler. It is what earns the word package: interaction maps reconciled on both sides of every interface, numbering confirmed across the set, no placeholder left unmarked, and the Open Decisions Register and WishList Log consolidated.
Calendar window: Monday 26 October to Wednesday 25 November 2026. Twelve working days inside a thirty-calendar-day window. Those thirty days hold twenty-two working days once Veterans Day is out — real slack for the days when work gets in the way.
The window closes the day before US Thanksgiving, so the holiday sits outside it entirely.
The method
How one writing day goes
The same seven steps every day. The method is what makes a day enough — read the whole thing first, mark rather than decide, then decide once.
Read the MSI template and guide all the way through
Open the applicable MSI procedure template and guide for the day and read it start to finish before answering anything. Section 11 routinely settles a question raised in section 3, and answering as you go means answering twice.
Mark as you read — do not decide yet
Y, ?, D or R against every marked decision. Marking is fast, deciding is slow, and mixing the two is what turns a one-day procedure into a three-day one.
Put it down for an hour
Not optional, and not idle time. Use the hour to send the guide to whichever leader owns the "?" decisions and get the meeting booked. The standard failure in this work is a two-day wait for a fifteen-minute answer.
Come back and answer everything you can
Every Y is written in. Every D is written as what you actually do today, not what you wish you did. Every R gets researched now or becomes a register entry with an owner and a date.
Book the decisions you cannot make
Anything still open goes to the person who owns it, meeting scheduled as priority, and into the Open Decisions Register with a name and a date against it. Never leave it as a blank.
Save it as your document
Move it into your own working SOP set. Renumber to your scheme — MSI's numbering is arbitrary and yours governs. Strip every MSI note and instruction from the working copy.
The guide itself is retained, not discarded: it enters your system as a controlled document of external origin, identified and distribution-controlled like any standard or regulation you hold. It becomes the historical record of why each decision was made the way it was, and the training source when you bring the next person up to speed. Day 1 gives you the procedure that governs exactly this — the guide is the first external document you will control under it.
Finish the day, and keep going if it is going well
Get as far as you can before the day ends. If you finish early and the momentum is real, start the next one — days run ahead more often than people expect, and being ahead is the buffer for the day something goes wrong.
You get a worked example. MSI supplies one finished working procedure — notes stripped, decisions resolved, renumbered — so nobody has to guess what "done" looks like on day 1.
Supervised AI is allowed, and MSI will show you how. Participants may use Claude or a similar assistant throughout, and MSI will walk the cohort through setting up a project workspace for it. Supervised is the operative word: a named person reviews and owns every line that reaches the working copy, and the assistant is never the approver. Where an assistant contributed, implementation validation is what proves the input was sound — a procedure that cannot be run as written fails at validation regardless of who drafted it.
The finish line
85%, with every open decision named
100% is not the target. 85% is a number a working quality manager recognizes as real.
Completion threshold: 85% of marked decisions resolved across the set, with every unresolved decision logged in an Open Decisions Register carrying an owner and a target date.
The register is the honest part. A procedure at 85% with fifteen open decisions, each owned and dated, is a working document. The same procedure with fifteen silent blanks is the failure mode — an undetermined field reads, to anyone examining it, as a decision never made.
One procedure may fall below 85% provided its open decisions are registered. Purchasing is the likely one, and it is defensible: criticality criteria rated on effect rather than spend, plus evaluation and re-evaluation rules, need procurement, engineering and often finance in the room. That sits outside the writer's control by design.
Scored before the templates are released
| Score | State |
|---|---|
| 0 | Nothing written |
| 1 | Tribal knowledge, or scattered work instructions |
| 2 | A written procedure exists, incomplete or unused |
| 3 | Documented and in use |
| 4 | Documented, in use, and measured |
Scored again at day 30
| Score | State |
|---|---|
| 0 | Not started |
| 1 | Read and marked up; decisions identified but not made |
| 2 | Placeholders resolved, tracked changes in, not yet reviewed |
| 3 | Adapted, reviewed, approved, ready to issue |
| 4 | Issued and in use |
One row per procedure, one number before and one number after: 11 rows and 44 points for ISO 9001 and ISO 13485, 13 rows and 52 points for ISO 7101. Movement is reported per company and as a cohort average. Evidence of work is tracked changes, marked-up placeholders, or a completed auditable procedure — any of the three counts. The per-topic pattern matters more than the total: if five companies stall on the same procedure, that is a finding about the document, not about them.
Participation terms
The Procedure Writing Retreat
In-office, treated as off-site. These are terms of participation, not suggestions.
Priority
The retreat is the highest-priority commitment in the company for its duration, treated as an investment rather than an interruption. Existing work continues unchanged; the people writing do not.
Calendar block
The days are blocked on the actual person's electronic calendar, marked busy, declining meetings.
Company-wide notice
A written notice goes out under the sponsor's name: who is unavailable, which days, who to route to instead, and what they are doing. "Writing the procedures that stop us reinventing this every quarter" lands differently inside a company than "unavailable."
Leader dialogue
Where a procedure needs a decision another leader owns, that conversation is scheduled as priority and the guide goes to that leader in advance. On day 1 the lead maps which decisions need which leader and sends the guides out that morning. The standard failure is a two-day wait for a fifteen-minute answer.
The pinky promise
Nothing in how the company runs changes during the writing window. Get it right on paper first.
Two exceptions, and only two: Document and Records Control, because you cannot control the documents you are writing without it, and job descriptions, because they feed the competence requirements every later procedure calls on.
This is the promise participants find hardest to keep. Writing a good procedure makes you want to go put it in place that afternoon — and then day 9 changes the record it produces, day 11 changes who reviews it, and you have rolled out something twice. Write the whole set, then implement once.
WishList Log
Every improvement the writing surfaces is captured and deferred — a required deliverable, prioritized with the management team after day 30. A company finishing with thirty deferred improvements has proof the phase did something.
A reaction a day
MSI posts a dated thread in the channel each writing day. One tap: ✅ finished, 🔄 started but not finished. No reaction means the day did not happen, and MSI calls the following morning.
Two consecutive silent days and the place is withdrawn, the license terminates, and the company is not included in the published results. Six places, limited by MSI's support capacity — a place that goes quiet is one another company could have used.
Support
One shared channel. Every question visible.
All six companies share a single Teams channel. Everyone sees every question and every answer.
Answered in-channel
How the document works.
- Where the appendices live
- How the interaction map is filled in
- Placeholder conventions
- How the sixteen sections relate to each other
Not answered during the thirty days
What the company should decide.
- Retention periods
- Tiers and thresholds
- Scope exclusions
Those are the decisions under test. Deferred questions are logged, answered at the debrief, and the list is published.
No individual consulting during the window. If MSI works alongside a participant, the test proves that MSI plus templates works — which nobody doubted.
How to apply
Seven stages, and one of them does the work
Apply
A written form, roughly ten minutes. Not a booking. Open the application form →
Screen
Applications are checked against the hard disqualifiers above.
Selection call
Twenty minutes with the shortlist.
Pre-release gate
Terms signed, calendar screenshot supplied, and the company-wide announcement already sent. A sponsor who will not put their name on that notice has not approved the time — they said yes in a meeting.
Two pieces of preparation come back with it: a current org chart, because half the marked decisions ask who owns, reviews or approves something, and a written inventory of the procedures you already have covering the topics in the sequence — what exists, where it lives, and whether anyone follows it. That inventory is the baseline score, so it is done once and does two jobs.
The package is released when the gate is cleared — announcement sent and calendar shown booked, not promised. Nothing is sent before then. It is called a gate because it is one.
Named alternates
MSI runs a named alternate for each standard through the same gate — three more companies, fully prepared. In the seventy-two hours before the common start date, any place whose gate has gone soft is offered to the alternate. Being named an alternate is not a rejection, and alternates are told so plainly.
Common start date — Monday, October 26, 2026
All six companies start on the same day. There are no mid-run replacements — once writing begins, the cohort is closed.
Day 30 — Wednesday, November 25, 2026
Written report plus a thirty-minute recorded debrief.
Applications close at 3:00pm Eastern on Friday, October 2, 2026. Every application is read against the disqualifiers by one person, and closing three weeks before the start date is what makes room for screening calls, the pre-release gate and the named alternates.
Applications received after the form closes are not held for a later round. There is no later round scheduled.
Consent, not a question: results publish anonymized by sector, size and standard. No company names, no logos.
If you are not selected
Six places. Nobody leaves with nothing.
Six is MSI's support capacity, not a judgment on the other applicants. Everyone who applies and is not selected gets a 50% code, their own Teams community, and the option to work the same twelve days alongside the cohort.
50% off the package you applied against. Every applicant who is not offered a place is sent a code for the procedure template and guide package for their standard. It is valid for five days from the day it is issued and it is not extended — the same short, deliberate window the challenge itself is about.
One code, one organization, one package. Applications rejected as consultants or template resellers do not receive a code.
Work the procedures along with the cohort
Use the code, get your package, and run the same twelve days on the same schedule. Same procedure each day, same order, same method — you are simply not in the measured group.
Everything that makes the cohort's days work applies equally to yours: block the calendar, send the notice, book the leaders, keep the register, write the whole set before implementing anything.
Your own Teams community
A separate community, not a window into the cohort's channel. It is yours — everyone working the same procedure on the same day, comparing notes with each other for the full thirty days.
MSI posts highlights from the cohort's channel into it: the questions worth everyone seeing, with the answers. Curated rather than piped through, so what reaches you is the useful part and nothing identifying reaches you at all.
The working aids are released here as the challenge runs — the Open Decisions Register, the WishList Log, the interaction-map worksheet, the day-by-day calendar block — on the day the cohort uses them.
The same boundary applies in both communities: MSI answers how the documents work, not what your company should decide. That constraint is what protects the test.
Register interest
Applications are not open yet
Leave your details and MSI will contact you on the day the application window opens — before it is announced anywhere else.
Apply
Start your application
Roughly ten minutes, and it is not a booking. MSI screens against the disqualifiers above and comes back either way — and every applicant not offered a place receives a 50% code for their package.
Closing at 3:00pm Eastern on Friday, October 2, 2026.
The form opens in a new tab. You do not need a Microsoft account to complete it.
Results publish anonymized by sector, size and standard — no company names, no logos.
Rather talk first? Call 760-434-9141,
email [email protected],
or schedule time with MSI.
Updated daily
The log
One entry per writing day, posted as the cohort works. Nothing here is edited after the fact.
| Company | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9001 · A | ||||||||||||
| 9001 · B | ||||||||||||
| 13485 · A | ||||||||||||
| 13485 · B | ||||||||||||
| 7101 · A | ||||||||||||
| 7101 · B |
✅ procedure finished · 🔄 started, not finished · blank means no reaction was logged that day. Companies are anonymized by standard. ISO 7101 runs fourteen days; days 13 and 14 are reported with the results.
Document and Records Control
Governs everything after it, and teaches the sixteen-section architecture.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Risk and Opportunities
Feeds most of what follows.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Nonconformity, Corrective Action and Continual Improvement
Produces an input leadership needs on day 4.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Leadership, including Management Review
Governance decided early, then governs the rest.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day. The management review input table will reference records from procedures not yet written — document numbers are assigned today and confirmed on assembly day.
Human Resource Management
Competence gates every other process.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Purchasing and Supplier Control
The procedure most likely to finish below threshold — and the one where that is defensible.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Sales Management / Service User Access
Carries the contingency path.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Production Management / Operational Control
Carries the contingency path.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Evaluation of Compliance
Inserted after day 8 for the healthcare cohort.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Emergency Preparedness
Inserted after day 8 for the healthcare cohort.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Control of Measuring and Monitoring
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Customer Satisfaction / Service User Experience
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Internal Audit
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Assembly — and the quality manual for ISO 13485
Turns eleven documents into a package.
Entry posts at the end of the writing day.
Day 30
What the cohort found
Anonymized by sector, size and standard.
Results publish here. Reported figures: movement score per company and cohort average · decisions resolved versus deferred · where deferrals clustered by topic · aggregate WishList count · the question log · and the ISO 13485 manual asymmetry noted against the comparison.
Questions
What people ask before applying
Is this a claim that procedures can be written from scratch in twelve days?
No, and MSI will not make that claim. Every participant works from a complete directional template and guide package. The test measures what twelve days buys when the judgment is already written down and the only remaining work is the decisions that are genuinely the company's own.
Why does the cohort start in late October?
ISO 9001:2026 publishes on 16 September 2026 and the updated MSI package takes about three weeks to build after that. Starting on 26 October puts the current edition in the ISO 9001 participants' hands before day 1, so they write to 2026 rather than writing to 2015 and transitioning weeks later. Avoiding exactly that kind of rework is what the whole test is about.
Why 85% and not 100%?
Because 100% invites easy dismissal, and 85% is a number a working quality manager recognizes as real. What makes 85% honest is the Open Decisions Register: every unresolved decision carries an owner and a target date rather than sitting as a silent blank.
Does MSI work alongside participants during the window?
No. Questions about how the documents work are answered in the shared channel; questions about what the company should decide are logged and answered at the debrief. Individual consulting during the window would prove that MSI plus templates works, which nobody doubted.
What happens if a company misses the threshold?
It is reported. Results publish either way, including a finding that twelve days is insufficient. A shortfall clustered on the same procedure across several companies is a finding about the document, not about the companies.
Can we start putting the procedures in place as we write them?
No — and this is the term participants find hardest. Only two things go live during the window: Document and Records Control, and job descriptions. Everything else waits until the set is complete. A procedure written on day 4 will have its records changed by day 9 and its reviewer changed by day 11, so implementing early means implementing twice.
When do applications close?
3:00pm Eastern on Friday, October 2, 2026. Every application is read against the disqualifiers by one person, and closing three weeks ahead of the start date leaves room for the screening calls, the pre-release gate and the named alternates. Applications are not held for a later round, and no later round is scheduled.
What happens if we apply and are not selected?
You are sent a 50% code for the procedure template and guide package for your standard, valid for five days from issue and not extended. You also get a place in a separate Teams community of your own for the full thirty days, where MSI posts curated highlights of the cohort's questions and releases the working aids as the cohort uses them. If you want to, use the code and run the same twelve days on the same schedule alongside the six — same procedure each day, same order, same method. You are simply not in the measured group.
What do we need ready before the start date?
A current org chart, because many of the marked decisions ask who owns, reviews or approves something. And a written inventory of the procedures you already have covering the topics in the sequence — what exists, where it lives, whether anyone follows it. The inventory doubles as your baseline score, so it is done once.
Will our company be named?
Not unless you decide otherwise after results are in. Publication is anonymized by sector, size and standard — no company names, no logos. Named quotes are requested separately, after the fact, and are never a condition of selection.
We already have some documentation. Does that disqualify us?
No. A certified organization rebuilding a stale system is as eligible as one starting from nothing, and existing state is captured in the baseline score. What does weigh against an application is having almost nothing left to do — a company already at 90% documented cannot demonstrate movement.
Who is running it
Diana Lynn — President
Management Systems International is a veteran-owned, female-owned ISO consulting firm founded in 1998. MSI implements and maintains management systems to ISO 9001, ISO 13485, ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and ISO 7101, and integrated combinations of them.
Twenty-eight years of watching the documentation phase stall projects from inside client systems is where this test comes from — and why the results publish whichever way they land.
Next
Not applying, but interested in the documents?
The packages under test are on general sale. Nothing in the cohort's version is different.
See the procedure templates and guides Run the free gap analysis
Prefer the whole build run for you? SurePath is the turnkey implementation, and SureFinish™ is six weeks of one-on-one advising for a quality manager doing it in-house. Questions: 760-434-9141 · [email protected]
Page last updated: August 23, 2026. This page is maintained while the field test runs and is revised as the design settles and as the cohort works. Details, dates and terms are subject to change; where a figure here differs from the written participation agreement, the agreement governs. Published results, when they appear, are final and are not edited after publication.