
The Checklist (2007) - bearwithclaws
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all
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wr1472
Atul Gawande wrote the Checklist Manifesto (<http://gawande.com/the-checklist-
manifesto>) which goes into a lot more detail about all this. I would
thoroughly recommend reading it if you want to improve how you get stuff done.

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adolph
The checklist for checklists seems like gold for making certain a group of
people are on the same page when making checklist items.

<http://www.projectcheck.org/checklist-for-checklists.html>

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r00fus
From that same site [1], you can see a collection of checklists [1], one of
which is the actual checklist that Pronovost created at Johns Hopkins
Hospital.

[1] <http://www.projectcheck.org/checklists.html>

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yummyfajitas
Checklists (or scripts) also work well in education:

<http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml>

<http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/honestft.htm>

<http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/DI/Summary.htm>

~~~
kgroll
And, as patio11 suggests, in deploying code.

From his Mixergy interview (4/30/10) [1]:

`` _I have a physical checklist for when I’m doing a deployment. It’s, off the
top of my head maybe six commands long; one, two, three, four, five, six. I
check them off; dink, dink, dink, dink, dink. And then after I do that, I have
the other checklist to verify that it actually took, you know the things that
I did that had the expected effect. I missed doing that once because I was
exhausted at the day job and, sure enough, that was my biggest down time in
four years. So I’m trying to be better at it in the future._ ''

[1] <http://mixergy.com/patrick-mckenzie-interview/>

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yummyfajitas
True, though I generally treat such checklists as a code smell. _Ideally_ all
the items should live in your makefile.

[edit: added emphasis to the word "ideally".]

~~~
hello_moto
Sometime some type of technology does not not lend itself to 100% automation.
So there will be certain steps that would require a bit of human intervention.

Of course, we all wish that all software is written according to the UNIX
philosophy.

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hello_moto
HN-ers, listen to this business proposition (this is not a sarcasm, but this
is an idea, a perspective if you will).

Find one of the productivity books, preferably ones that are quite popular.
Implement a software, web-app, mobile-app, desktop-app, plugins, whatever,
based on such books.You'll get instant userbase that love your software.

Rinse-and-repeat.

There are a few productivity tools based on GTD out there. Looking at the
checklist-for-checklists link that adolph mentioned in this thread reminds me
of Trello. Seems like a simple money making scheme don't you think?

~~~
zefhous
It's a good idea, but not so simple to actually get traction...

A couple years ago I was hired to build a checklist web app based on Atul
Gawande's book, _The Checklist Manifesto_. Being the very idea that you're
referring to here it's a very relevant example.

The guy who hired me has invested a lot of time and some money into trying to
get traction but nothing has come of it. Granted he's probably not done
everything perfectly, but he's put a lot of time into seeding the site with
public checklists for different subjects and trying to get people using it.

As far as I know nobody uses the site. It's not that great but it provides
some basic value and is definitely a minimum viable product including
revisions, public and private checklists, ability to share and collaborate
with others, pdfs, etc.

For those curious the site is here: <http://expertchecklists.com/>

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nhebb
I have a number of checklists I use, from deployment to form design, but the
practice that has had the biggest impact for me is creating on-the-fly
checklists while I'm coding. I often set out to do one thing and realize there
are four or five other things that need to be implemented or changed. I used
to try to keep track of everything in my head, but when your mental todo list
starts looking like a complicated digraph, that just isn't effective. Now I
don't code without a scratch pad by my side.

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GFischer
I guess that a hospital is like the military in that there has to be clearly
delineated chain of command, but some points raised in the article could be
solved by empowering doctors and especially nurses:

"chlorhexidine soap, shown to reduce line infections, was available in fewer
than a third of the I.C.U.s. This was a problem only an executive could solve"

If nurses and doctors were empowered, that problem probably wouldn't have
arisen.

I agree that other solutions are more in executives' territory: "they
persuaded Arrow International, one of the largest manufacturers of central
lines, to produce a new central-line kit that had both the drape and
chlorhexidine in it."

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ArbitraryLimits
I don't know about that. The main point I got from the article is that when
doctors are more empowered they disdain the checklist and mess up more.

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GFischer
I'm not taking away from the checklists, which sound like a great improvement
:) .

It was an observation about the executives.

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tom_b
Challenge HN: Share your checklist for training yourself to be a better
hacker. Or to have more successful projects.

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AdamFernandez
I think all of these checklist ideas are great, but does anyone have any
suggestions regarding how to make the decision makers in the medical community
pay attention? It sounds like there are possible opportunities here.

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peteretep
I used to travel a lot for work. My "Master Packing List", has meant I no
longer find myself meeting clients without, say, a belt, or socks, or laptop
charger, etc.

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kylemaxwell
I've seen this many times and it _never_ gets old.

