J.D. Meier's Blog

Software Engineering, Project Management, and Effectiveness

Execution Checklists

Execution Checklists

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Execution checklists are a simple, but effective technique for improving results.  Rather than a to do list, it's a focused checklist of steps in sequence to execute a specific task.  I use notepad to start.  I write the steps.  On each execution of the steps, by myself or a teammate, we improve the steps as we learn.  We share our execution checklists in Groove or in a Wiki.

Key Scenarios
There's two main scenarios:

  1. You are planning the work to execute.  In this case, you're thinking through what you have to get done.  This is great when you feel over-burdened or if you have a mind-numbing, routine task that you need to get done.  This can help you avoid task saturation and it can also help you avoid silly mistakes while you're in execution mode.
  2. You are paving a path through the execution.  In this case, you're leaving a trail of what worked.  This works great for tasks that you'll have to perform more than once or you have to share best practices across the team.   

I encourage my teams to create execution checklists for any friction points or sticking spots we hit.  For example, if there's a tough process with lots of movable parts, we capture the steps and tune them over time as we gain proficiency.  As simple as this sounds it's very effective whether it's for a personal task, a team task, or any execution steps you want to improve. 

One of my most valuable execution checklists is steps for rebuilding my box.  While I could rebuild my box without it, I would fumble around a bit and probably forget some key things, and potentially get reminded the hard way.

The most recent execution checklist I made was for building the PDF for our Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server guide.  There were a lot of manual steps and there was plenty of room for error.  Each time I made a build, I baked the lessons learned into the execution checklist.  By the time I got to the successful build, there was much less room for error simply by following the checklist.

  • What do you use to host your Wikis.  Can one be hosted within the TFS Web Portal?

  • I actually use a few different Wikis.  I use MediaWiki, FlexWiki, and the Wiki functionality in SharePoint 2007.  For quick team Wikis, I've been most effective with FlexWiki because of quick double-click and type, no frills, plain text.  For significant bodies of knowledge, I've been most effective with MediaWiki because of extensive content management and user experience features.  For corporate sharing, I've been most effective with the SharePoint Wikis, simply because of the integration.  I'm still looking for a shared, offline Wiki that I can use for scenarios where I use Groove.  As far as TFS, if you use SharePoint 2007, you get Wikis.

  • Whether you're a new hire or taking on a new job, here's some principles, patterns and practices to be

  • Patterns and Practices for New Hires from J.D. Meier's Blog has really good advise on this: Whether you're


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