The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Atul Gawande · ★★★★☆ · 208 pages · 2009
In the book Atul Gawande discusses how the humble checklist provided for a significant change in surgery rooms. The checklist provided a way for a team to work together by delineating power. Whereas before the surgeon was seen as the maestro of the operating room with their power unchecked the checklist spreads the power dynamic. The checklist helps go through the mundane things not because they are something out of the ordinary but because they are ordinary and people forget. Overall a good book which can be used elsewhere. Also have it as an idea for things such as a service deployments, checklist for marking a project as done.
A checklist has to be tested in te read world, which is inevitably more complicated than expected. First drafts aslways fall apart and one needs to study how, make changes, and keep testing until the checklist works consistently.
Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no aweareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people's brains off rather than turn them on.
Good checklists are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything--a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps-- the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.