Item — HN Reader

For many years I' been struggling to introduce more rigorous use of checklists at work, but everyone always balked at them, saying that it was too trivial, too time-consuming, and too brain-dead. I meticulously cataloged the errors made and the time taken to resolve them and finally presented a report, and this article.

Finally, checklists are starting to become routine, and people wonder why they never used them before. The mindless drudgery of having to remember minor and minute details has been lifted, and they can concentrate on what's different and difficult about each situation.

My uncle is an aerobatics pilot, and he says that the incredibly low rate of incidents in aviation is due to the ubiquitous use of checklists.

What could you use one for?

1 comments

The problem I have with checklists are that I tend to treat then as I treat my shopping list: make it, look at it and forget half of it.

What do you use your checklists for?

Can't say in details. Broadly:

* checking specific configuration items,

* performing deployment in a specific order (even when it doesn't matter),

* testing deployment step-wise (so you know certain things work when debugging something that doesn't)

... and so on. We start with a checklist, and we then push as much as we can do automated scripts. At the end of a deployment we have a checklist to ask what can be moved from checklists to scripts. Next time round we do both to check that the script works, then reduce the checklist.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's making it "the norm" that's having the biggest effect. People are starting to know that certain things will work, and it releases them from tedious checking.