The Checklist Manifesto: How to get things right

The Checklist Manifesto: How to get things right
By Atul Gawande

This book, originally published as an article in the New Yorker still reads like an essay. And that is all good: It is well written and one of those books you could take with you for entertainment on a week-end somewhere with a good chair or couch.

The message is simple: Checklists work, but it is difficult to get people to use them. And the author goes into a wide range of examples to show where checklists have been applied successfully. He also draws on his own experience as a medical doctor and medical advisor describing the practice of writing a good checklist and getting it accepted by its target audience.

Althought the range of the examples is wide – from aviation through medicine to investment – they are few. And while reading, I could not see a reason why the IT industry was not included. Nowhere have I seen more checklists than amongst develepers, system managers, system designers and the rest of their ilk.

But that does not take anything away from the book itself. It is well written and is a fun and easy read.  And it focuses your mind once more on the processes within your organization or profession and ways to improve them.

I read the e-book version (amazon) and it has been well formated to the kindle screen. And the book has been flawlessly copy-edited, a rare trait for books these days.