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Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

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Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#51

Post by potatoman22 »

ncmncm wrote: post #37

Amazingly enough, most fields where death from mistakes is common, other than aviation and medicine, still do not use checklists. And, even most hospitals still don't, or do only in some places. Police don't, anywhere I know of. Probably a few fire crews do (I bet mainly at airports). Arguably, not using checklists, or even just not using one that one time, should automatically cause the defendant to lose any wrongfu…

A lot of EHRs implement checklists for procedures and checkups. Most doctors absolutely hate it.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#52

Post by bumby »

axpy906 wrote: post #49
tablespoon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Here's a few good points and ideas, surrounded by a fuck-ton of anecdotes and proverbs, because you're not going to pay $20 for a magazine article." Though to be fair, sometimes those anecdotes are useful. I like examples, especially ones where an idea is applied to a situation that resembles my own. Also repetition is helpful to actually have a concept sink in. Also, what's filler for you may be the most relevant…

I think we’ve lost the plot. The important thing is if you can recall and then use what’s in the book. If it takes repetition or length to do it, so be it. Some books even recommend you read them a second time for that purpose, like Getting Things Done and How To Win Friends and Influence People.

I think for the layman, those anecdotes that strike on pathos are what sticks. I remember the stories about patients who avoid mishaps through checklists that caught the wrong limb being marked and their (understandably) irate reaction more than statistics.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#53

Post by bumby »

blamazon wrote: post #41
kmt-lnh wrote: post #16

Gawande mentions the checklist libraries of different manufacturers. I've checked the references (and parts of the citation graph) but didn't find anything about them. The closest were NASA's standards about the typography and structure of flight deck checklist. Does anybody know about how are checklists managed in the real word? How are they stored, retrieved and most importantly updated, when something changes? Not…

There are firms that specialize in software to do exactly what you’re describing. But a lot of it is just cultural. For example, how do you make sure checklists are updated? You hire people whose sole job is to update checklists. One example of a software firm in this space: https://www.fieldlogs.com/FieldLogsStatic/index.html

It’s been awhile since I’ve read it but I believe the book touched on the cultural piece. One of the unique things about aviation is that there culture if checklists starts with neophyte pilot and continues through their career.

Many other domains have checklists but not the cultural element. When it’s not engrained, you run into a lot of “I don’t need a checklists, I know what I’m doing.”

IMO the culture piece is the real tough problem to solve.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#54

Post by tonyarkles »

austinjp wrote: post #39
_n_b_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear industry here. In the fanciest systems, checklists live in a computerized procedure system tied into the plant process computer, so the plant state and procedures can be kept in sync and mistakes can be avoided when the software can see if you didn’t actually do the step you were supposed to. A more conventional approach is a document management system and controlled binders in the control room with the lates…

Yeah so I'm somewhat tickled that a nuclear industry technician commenting on a thread about checklists has two "finally..." points :) Thanks too for the circle-slash system, I'm pinching that.

> Thanks too for the circle-slash system, I'm pinching that.

Yeah, that’s getting cribbed for sure!

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#55

Post by rurp »

throwaway192874 wrote: post #6
vincentmarle wrote: post #2

> Making a good human-usable checklist takes a lot of workshopping. Airlines are still constantly revising their 200-page manual of individually optimized checklists for every possible emergency, as plane designs change and new safety data rolls in. When I first read the book a couple years ago, and introduced checklists into my team, I found that there was no great tool to manage and create checklists and share it w…

Most project management systems have methods for dealing with checklists, this is definitely not what slack is designed to do no matter how much they market it as a "productivity tool" So if you're not using something for project management first you need one of those, but just about everyone does, and once you have one you can start using it's checklist features Then it depends on what that specific software offers,…

Is there a way to use checklists in Confluence in a way that's not terrible? My team has a checklist we go through regularly and have to use Confluence for this sort of thing. While you can make checklists in there, we can't find a way to make the check marks ephemeral. Every single time someone checks an item it updates and saves the page. We also can't find a "clear all" button. So every time we go through the checklist someone has to manually uncheck every single item, or forget and just leave some checked for the next time.

The best option I've found is to hack in a little bookmarklet to uncheck all of the items with a click. It works for now, but I've done this to fix other Atlassian annoyances in the past and they usually churn the html enough that the scripts regularly need to be updated.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#56

Post by ncmncm »

potatoman22 wrote: post #51
ncmncm wrote: post #37

Amazingly enough, most fields where death from mistakes is common, other than aviation and medicine, still do not use checklists. And, even most hospitals still don't, or do only in some places. Police don't, anywhere I know of. Probably a few fire crews do (I bet mainly at airports). Arguably, not using checklists, or even just not using one that one time, should automatically cause the defendant to lose any wrongfu…

A lot of EHRs implement checklists for procedures and checkups. Most doctors absolutely hate it.

Pilots did, too, at first. It took two generations before they loved them.

But pilot checklists are written by pilots. Who knows who writes EHRs' checklists?

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#57

Post by zomglings »

vincentmarle wrote: post #2

> Making a good human-usable checklist takes a lot of workshopping. Airlines are still constantly revising their 200-page manual of individually optimized checklists for every possible emergency, as plane designs change and new safety data rolls in. When I first read the book a couple years ago, and introduced checklists into my team, I found that there was no great tool to manage and create checklists and share it w…

Google Docs has introduced checklists alongside unordered and ordered lists.

The keyboard shortcut to start a checklist is CTRL + SHIFT + 9.

Blew my mind when a friend told me about this.

Edit: Also, for software teams, GitHub supports checklists on their issues/PRs. My team has written a bot which blocks PRs until all checks are checked off. It's been pretty fantastic.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#58

Post by dllthomas »

larrywright wrote: post #4

I liked this book, but it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I read the book, and I read the article that the book was based on. I don’t recall learning anything from the book that I hadn’t already learned from the article.

I disagree. The most interesting bits for me were the examples of application where things differed from my expectation. Construction checklists that included items of the form "Person A talks to person B" is the example that comes readily to mind.

The worst thing about the book is all the self-congratulatory back patting, but I think that's comparably present in the article. I still often recommend the book.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#59

Post by seanwilson »

larrywright wrote: post #4

I liked this book, but it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I read the book, and I read the article that the book was based on. I don’t recall learning anything from the book that I hadn’t already learned from the article.

> it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length.

I've seen solo technical authors trying to sell concise ~100 page books and you often see comments like "that's too expensive, you can read it in a few hours and ebooks don't cost anything to produce!", ignoring the value of the information and how it's much more effort to be concise over verbose. I can see why there's a pressure to stretch text out to make it monitisable.

Are there good examples of authors making money from very short books or articles? I'm amazed there still isn't a web microtransactions solution yet so e.g. blog readers can tip a small amount with no effort so concise + valuable information can be monitised and encouraged.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#60

Post by zrail »

seanwilson wrote: post #59
larrywright wrote: post #4

I liked this book, but it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I read the book, and I read the article that the book was based on. I don’t recall learning anything from the book that I hadn’t already learned from the article.

> it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I've seen solo technical authors trying to sell concise ~100 page books and you often see comments like "that's too expensive, you can read it in a few hours and ebooks don't cost anything to produce!", ignorin…

Depends on what you mean by "money". My book Mastering Modern Payments made ~$80k in its useful lifetime and it was about 100 pages.
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