Information Management

robust [roh-buhst]: strongly or stoutly built.

checklist [chek-list]: a list of items.

Struggling to create a process that produces a quality end product every time?

Something as simple as a checklist may be your starting point.  It apparently has worked for hotels.  If you’ve heard about Peter Pronovost, then you’ll know the value it has brought to healthcare.

What does a checklist accomplish?  It ensures that each step of a process has been followed.  In terms of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, the checklist lays out the initial Plan of what to Do, and depending upon the process, can also provide all of the necessary Check elements to ensure that the process is meeting the desired outcomes.

I was not a software developer by education.  So when I began developing Thrive, I had to establish a way to ensure that when I developed a new feature of Thrive that the end result was something that was created with a minimal amount of defects (bugs) and with a maximum amount of value to the end user.  Nobody wants to do something twice…I don’t even want to discover a bug, and the worst scenario is when defects reach the end user.  The checklist I created attempts to prevent defects from being created in the first place, but also tries to uncover them before they’re “out the door”.

From a software development standpoint, my checklist involves two core elements, with sub-lists under each main area.  Summarized, it looks like this:

1. Database Development: create data structures to support new feature, check impacts to existing data, create data necessary to support UI elements
2. User Experience: UI feature layout, interface logic and interface with data, user navigation, user security

This has worked incredibly well.  It has even worked when creating custom, “one-off” applications.  It ensures that everything is considered, even if it is not necessarily relevant to the current feature.  The checklist doesn’t cover every possible development scenario, but it probably covers 95% of them.  And when the outliers arise the checklist can get refined to ensure that the process remains solid.

While a checklist is not standard work, it can certainly be the starting point, whether in manufacturing, healthcare, government, or services.  It shouldn’t be difficult to get people together to determine a basic process checklist quickly.  From there, a more robust standard work can be developed.

Don’t think lean principles or standard work can be applied to the development of software or your IT department?  Alan Shalloway and Tom and Mary Poppendieck would beg to differ.

UPDATE

Found some new checklist resources on Harvard Business Review: What Sort of Checklist Should You Be Using? and an interview with Dr. Atul Gawande on Using Checklists to Prevent Failure.

I LOVE this article. In my opinion brilliant. And I’m sure when I get around to reading it, I will love this book as well. Tom Peters talked about the author, Mark Hurst, on his blog today.  Mark Hurst is the author of the book and founded the company Creative Good. The article deals primarily with how people manage (or don’t manage) their email. The book goes into greater detail on that topic, but primarily discusses how to survive below the “weight” of all the bits of data on your computer.

I’ve wondered in the past if a consulting business could be created to help people manage their emails, photos, and all other digital “stuff” on their computers. In the past, people had to find places to store photo albums, letters, and 8mm home movie films and the physical mess was often readily apparent and had to be dealt with. Today, people get away with a digital clutter that goes largely unobserved, but creates stress and work when something important needs to be located. And I think toward the future as well…when people pass away today, their heirs have to rummage through and make decisions about all the “stuff” sitting around. In the future, who’s going to want to pour through the legacy of terabytes of someone’s life and try to decide where it’s all to go?

I often shudder when I see other people’s email inboxes. And another favorite of mine is people’s computer desktops…every square inch (or pixel) littered with shortcuts to every program or spreadsheet imaginable. I think people make managing information stressful and difficult. Looking for the most important or “active” items becomes a chore, and has created a market for desktop search engines because people have no idea what they do with any of the information they have.

There’s a lot more to it, but the basic way I manage my own personal email is to leave only unresponded to or “active” emails in my inbox. And I never let the number of emails in my inbox grow larger than the pane their listed in (about 15 items). If I can respond to an item quickly, I do, and I do it right away and delete the item I just responded to. Google’s gmail with its conversational style accomplishes exactly what I set out to accomplish…always only have one copy of a chain of emails.

There’s probably a lot more I could say about email and file management, and I recently responded to someone’s post on Lean.org‘s web site, so rather than re-typing my ideas, I’ll just copy them here. The remainder of this post will show that.

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