Frequently asked questions
What LiveSOP is, and what it is not.
01
What LiveSOP is
What is LiveSOP?
An operational execution platform. It takes the standard operating procedures you already have and runs them as live missions — every step with a named owner, a due time and its dependencies — so a whole team executes from one operating picture instead of a document and a group chat.
How is LiveSOP different from a task manager?
A task manager holds tasks. LiveSOP holds the procedure, the facts the procedure depends on, and the relationships between the steps. Change one fact — an arrival time, a location, an owner — and every step that depended on it updates, with the timing consequences attached. A task list cannot do that, because it does not know what depends on what.
Is LiveSOP incident management software?
No. Incident tools open a record when something happens and track it to closure. LiveSOP runs the procedure that the incident triggers: who does what, by when, in what order, and what changes when the conditions do.
What can LiveSOP integrate with?
This is where a procedure stops being a document. LiveSOP brings in your organization’s own data and terminology — your sites, assets, people and the names you actually use — and joins it to the external sources an operation depends on: live tracking and telematics, weather and severe-weather alerts, travel itineraries, mapping, access control and physical security systems, inventory and equipment records, and open-source feeds. The value is not a dashboard of everything. It is that a step in your procedure can depend on a real-world condition and know the moment that condition moves.
Does it replace our mass notification or comms protocol?
No. It decides who needs to be told what, and pushes to the channels people already use. Notification rules are set when the procedure is written, not improvised while the operation is running.
02
How it works in practice
What is a mission?
A mission is the structure that turns a static procedure into something that runs. The template holds what your organization knows: the steps, their order, who owns each one, what has to finish before what, and the rules for who gets told. Activating it binds that knowledge to a single real operation — these people, this site, this vehicle, this arrival time. From that moment the mission is live: it carries its own state, holds the dependencies between its steps, watches the conditions it relies on, and recalculates when any of them move. The procedure is the knowledge. The mission is that knowledge running, with everything it needs to react.
What are mission variables?
People, places and things — the elements a mission actually touches. A protectee and a driver. A hotel, a hospital, an office, a site. A vehicle, a generator, a medical kit, a piece of equipment. Each is entered once and referenced by name wherever the procedure needs it, so it is the same thing in every step rather than a phrase retyped in eleven places. That is what makes change tractable: when the hotel changes, the vehicle is swapped or the arrival slips an hour, every step that touched it knows.
Does LiveSOP make decisions on its own?
No. The operator decides. When conditions change, LiveSOP does the work that has to happen before a decision is possible: what is affected, what the options are, what each one costs in time, and who needs to know either way. Then it puts that in front of the person whose call it is. Approvals stay with named people. What changes is not who decides — it is how much they know when they decide, and how quickly they can act.
What is the Activity Rail?
The operation’s own record, written as it runs: every change, decision, approval and completion, with its timestamp and its owner. It is readable mid-operation, so whoever joins late can get current without a catch-up call, and it is finished the moment the mission closes.
What is Mission Confidence?
A running read on whether the operation is still likely to succeed — not only what has happened, but whether the remaining steps, their timing and their dependencies still add up. It is the question an operations lead is already asking silently. LiveSOP answers it in the open.
03
Fit, adoption and evaluation
Do we have to rewrite our procedures?
No. You load the procedure you already run. It becomes a versioned template that stays editable, so what you learn while running it folds back into the procedure rather than staying in one person’s memory.
Who uses it during an operation?
The operations center or duty desk runs the mission and sees the whole picture. Step owners see only their own work, on a phone, with what is due and what it blocks. Executives and stakeholders get status without asking for it.
How long does it take to start?
One procedure. Load it, activate it, run it. Most teams start with the procedure that hurts most — the one that always takes the same three phone calls to get moving.
The rest of the answers are easier to show than to write.
Bring a procedure you actually run. We activate it as a mission, change the conditions mid-operation, and show what the operator sees and decides.