The book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Do It Right by Atul Gawande has become a global phenomenon: a top ten entry on the New York Times bestseller list and reaching number seventeen on the most popular books purchased on Amazon.com.

This is somewhat surprising given that its fundamental idea seems so common sense: putting together simple checklists and running them before an activity will reduce the incidence of errors and provide better results.

In the book, Mr. Gawande draws on his own experience as a surgeon to demonstrate how often small errors and omissions can have disastrous (and sometimes fatal) consequences, and provides evidence of how adopting checklist use can not only reduce if not almost eradicate these incidents. at the same time he improves the overall result.

So, can the lesson of the importance of checklists, learned the hard way first in aviation and more recently in medicine, benefit project management?

The answer to this question is a resounding yes.

In the medical context, hospitals that have introduced the practice of surgical teams meeting before an operation to verify that everyone knows what they are supposed to do and has prepared appropriately have seen benefits in reduced errors and savings. of costs in a reduced need. for aftercare. At one hospital cited in the book, two years after the introduction of a simple checklist in the Intensive Care Unit, it was estimated to have averted 43 infections, 8 deaths, and saved the hospital around $2 million.

When viewed from a project management perspective, this practice amounts to:

• The project team and all interested parties fully understand and agree to their roles, responsibilities, and responsibilities.
• The project plan or work schedule that is reviewed and agreed upon in advance by all parties involved in its completion
• All regular meetings during the life of the project are rigorous and consistent in addressing the items on the agenda.
• Activities designed to achieve a specific objective during the project life cycle (such as delivery of project-specific products, board/end-of-life meetings, or acquisition of third-party services) are broken down into a level of detail that ensures that all the necessary tasks are carried out. explicit, understood, and has ownership assigned

Research has identified poor planning at the start of projects, weak execution throughout the life cycle, and a lack of understanding of the requirements of their roles by project teams as key causes of project failure, thus that it is easy to see how adopting some sort of checklist-based approach would bring benefits and reduce time and cost overruns.

ace Checklist Manifesto makes it clear that it is often not only new or inexperienced people who need to use checklists, but also more experienced ones, as over time it is very easy for experts to forget, ignore or not pay attention to those tasks that are perceived as small or mundane. . However, when these types of basic activities are not completed or fail, the repercussions can be disastrous for the successful completion of the project within the agreed time, cost, scope and quality.

A simple and common example of this problem is that project teams do not provide decision makers and stakeholders with the necessary information in the correct format to obtain the approvals required to move the project forward. The result is a delay as the correct information is gathered.

Checklist Manifesto admits that there may be resistance to the introduction of the approach: the use of checklists can be seen as a bureaucratic imposition or as undermining the importance of a role. It can also be perceived as an admission of weakness on the part of the expert who believes that his knowledge and experience are too deep and broad to be reduced to list items. The book also points out that many people have a romanticized view of their work: they would like to see themselves as mavericks, the person who acts intuitively and gets results by not doing things by the rules.

To overcome these perceptions it is only necessary to admit that we are all human; we all make mistakes and can fail to achieve what we set out to achieve. In times of crisis it is sticking to the process that achieves results instead of abandoning it and doing the same. Looking from a higher level, the benefits offered by the checklist approach are so obvious and so great that no meaningful case can be made against it.

In the field of project management, the type of objections that Checklist Manifesto The details can also be worked through by encouraging experts to share their knowledge and act as recognized and recognized coaches and mentors to their less experienced colleagues.

Introducing the checklist approach to a business sounds simple, but ensuring consistency across all projects in a portfolio or program while maintaining control and proper governance presents some challenges. Using a checklist approach as a vehicle for sharing knowledge and best practices adds an additional level of complexity.

With TOMA’s product Coreca, companies can create templates based on checklists that can be configured to cover:

• All tasks in one project – aligned with a standard project methodology such as PRINCE2 if necessary
• Set of specific tasks – to manage items within a project, such as change control or post-project review
• Specific deliverables: to ensure and guarantee the quality of products of specific projects, such as Business Cases or Project Initiation Documents.

Tasks in a model are associated with specific outputs and aligned with a specific role.

Once the model templates are in place, they can be used as needed. When you instantiate a model, a project team is assigned to each of the required roles, and therefore each member gets a view through their own workspaces of all the actions that are required of them.

Coreca’s unique knowledge sharing features allow users to add advice and guidance to tasks and their associated outcomes, meaning future users have access to accumulated knowledge and best practices in the context and at the time they they find it more useful.

Coreca can be up and running in a matter of days and weeks providing tangible benefits.