Repeated Execution: The Value of Checklists
In recent years, I’ve started doing my share of the cooking around the house. I’ve found that it’s a great pastime and wonderful learning experience. I like to experiment with flavors and ingredients once in a while but I also like following recipes that all but guarantee a consistent meal.
What I love most about following recipes is that you know what to expect when you’re complete. Managing a project is the same way. When you are a project manager you are expected and accountable for delivering results in line with the expectations set forth by the sponsor. You have a million details to watch out for and even the most experienced PM’s will have things fall through the cracks once in a while. One of the best (and easiest) ways to ensure that you’re not leaving things by the wayside is to employ checklists.
The first response I typically get when I talk about checklists is that “all projects are different”. While this is true in some sense, there are a lot of similarities among projects (at least within the same industry – software projects are vastly different than construction projects). There are a lot of things that you can put into a checklist for various phases of your project.
Here are just a few of the things that are on my Project Initiation checklist (disclaimer – this does not align directly with PMBOK):
On-board your new team members
Conduct a risk assessment and develop your initial risk register
Develop a list of stakeholders
Develop your project charter
I don’t use it as a prescriptive process that I adamantly adhere to, but a suggested guideline of activities to conduct. Depending on the project maturity level of an organization, you may already have these items mandated by your PMO. I also evaluate my checklists constantly to see what is and isn’t working for me. If something is on the list that no longer makes sense for my needs, it comes off the list. Again, it’s not prescriptive – just a guideline and set of reminders.
When you find something that works for you, you like to stick with it and tweak it as you go. Why should project management be any different? In a future article I plan to share some more of my checklist elements with you and get into more detail on why they are there and what value they serve me (and what value they can serve you). If you can guarantee the inputs, your chances at guaranteeing the outputs are much greater.
Want to know more? Let's talk!
