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Maybe an item on the checklist to refactor the checklist (as needed)?

Or maybe a checklist for refactoring all the checklists?

/this could get out of hand...




You don't need that in the checklist. But what you do need is a periodic review of checklists and other procedure and process documents.

Suppose you have training material for new hires ("How we use git 101"). Do you hand them the same document from 10 years ago? Does it have accurate setup instructions (now you use Bitbucket and not Gitlab or vice versa, and it presents internally on a different domain).

All of these kinds of documents should be reviewed with some frequency (and ideally you should have a way to submit changes outside of the explicit review times, the explicit reviews are to catch things that weren't found earlier; wikis can help here). If you don't, then you do end up with the problem being discussed. You'll have a lot of checklists or procedures being done "because it says so" and not because they're needed.


At some point you have to run through the process with enough disengaged brain cells that you can think about what you're doing while doing it. With processes that only get used in emergencies, this doesn't happen often enough.

I suspect that's part of the secret behind Netflix Chaos Monkey. Every single process gets run multiple times a month, and it's normalized enough that it's not a constant panic mode thing.




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