Creative, attentive and serious attitude to work is an important component of modern business. However, the creative principle has always been closely associated with unforeseen expenses of working time, uncertainty in the assessment of labor, the need to clarify the cost of work performed.
There are a large number of tasks that do not require high qualifications and can be solved by accurate and high-quality execution of a sequence of simple actions. A checklist is just such an option for solving a problem.
Scope of the idea
The sequence of simple operations is used both for solving critical tasks that are performed by qualified specialists, and for other tasks that an ordinary worker, student or schoolchild can handle.
A checklist is a sample of the correct algorithm for solving a problem, written in the form of a sequence of the simplest, most accurate and concise, but complete actions that need to be performed, for example, to:
- the plane took off;
- go to the store and buy what my mother asked;
- build a business;
- to achieve some goal;
- check or do something for something.
The conveyor once made a revolution in industry, and it turned out to be useful in the production of not only simple parts, but also complex machines, mechanisms, food, sporting goods, clothing, shoes.
Ideally, when a checklist is a dozen minimum necessary, simple actions:
- ideal simple action - a simple, unconditional instruction to do something;
- perfect guidance does not create options, but the next action is performed strictly in turn;
- no erratic movements, everything is done strictly according to the plan and according to the content of each item on the sheet.
The goal (task) can be great, and on one sheet not every solution can fit. However, nothing prevents the compilation of several checklists, which are executed sequentially by different workers at certain intervals.
Problem Planning
Planning is an important part of any business. A checklist is also a plan, not just a solution to a problem. You can draw up a plan of action in case of an unforeseen situation, a plan of behavior in case of an accident or natural disaster, a daily routine in a children's recreation camp. The class schedule at the institute or school is also a test product for “simple intellect”, since there are conditions in this kind of checklist. For example, even or odd days, weeks.
A person always planned everything that he did, but did it unconsciously. The emergence of the concept of a “checklist” is an example of how the ordinary and habitual unconscious enters the competence of the conscious, gets a new meaning and a radically new quality.
The term itself is relatively young, but the history of its idea and its application spans hundreds of years. Most likely, the first papyri with the regulation of the sequence of simple actions were used in ancient times, otherwise it is difficult to explain the heyday of ancient civilizations, as well as the reasons for their fall.
Sample: FTP daemon checklist
This is a sample written once and used for many years. Nothing is beautifully decorated here, it is written in a Unixoid style, but practical.
Generally speaking, such checklists are born as a result of lengthy administration by a system administrator. As a rule, after two or three years, after hundreds of installations, the administrator writes such a memo to himself and his colleagues. This is a real checklist: ugly but practical.
Sample a beautiful impractical checklist
The author of this product worked for the public. Outwardly, everything is correct, but this in no way makes the site modern, decent, reliable and practical.
Everything is written correctly here, but this is not a checklist. In particular, the “Logo” is primarily the verbs:
- create;
- how to create;
- what to consider;
- what to discard.
Each such verb should have several recommendations.
The appeal to the slogan is reasonable, but the creation of the slogan is creativity, and its verification is a long practice (in real live Internet with a massive influx of visitors), neither one nor the other relates to the checklist.
And so for each item.
Really “flying” check list (fragment) for Boeing 737
That is how the check list should be drawn up. The phrase is a simple answer. That is a simple action and a simple result.
This is only a fragment of the document, written in English, but in this particular case it is not the language that is important, but the accuracy of the declaration of action and verification of the result of its implementation.
Test Applications
Practical applications of a clear action plan:
- sports
- Accounting;
- verification of enterprise products;
- company audit;
- investigative measures;
- launch of a spaceship, etc.
Virtually any area of ​​human life and activity can be determined by an assortment of various small plans: checklist No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, etc.
Of particular importance is the strict regulation of actions in critical areas of activity, for example, in preparing a surgeon for an operation, when medical personnel, all participating doctors and nurses, each within their competence, carry out a strictly regulated list of actions. Usually everything is done “on the machine”, but professional ethics requires all actions to be performed “on a piece of paper”.
A checklist is an indispensable document in the certification and regulation of the production and testing of food products, children's products, checking the operation of machines and mechanisms.
Internet technology and simple operations
Any surgical intervention requires a highly qualified surgeon. But it also requires the proper execution of simple operations. In particular, all the instruments on the operating table should lie strictly in certain places, the patient should be prepared for the operation not only physiologically, but also mentally.
A checklist (an example of a sequence of actions) is not a program, not an algorithm, and it is difficult to attribute it to programming in the direct sense of the word, but Internet technology has led to the need to create and perform many routine, but very important operations.
Creating a web resource requires at least three Apache, PHP and MySQL or its analogue on the basis of another server, another interpreter and database. Installation of this trinity is the minimum necessary clear sequence of actions.
The mistake here is fraught with the inability to work at all. Modern Internet programming is characterized by the fact that the server, interpreter and browser programming language algorithms “don’t think”, but if they don’t understand what, then they definitely “don’t”!
Logging errors must be declared, but often logging is not enough to find the problem.
Internet programming: simple solutions to complex problems
A checklist is a solution to a problem. The practice of Internet programming in JavaScript and PHP, in particular, with an object-oriented style of writing allows only two solutions to the problem:
- Professional intuition.
- Test case.
There is no third. Testing tools in programming have long been very developed. There are also a lot of additional tools for checking code, and developers of programming languages ​​devote a lot of time and effort to creating debugging tools and finding errors.
But to determine in what place, at what level, in which subsystem of objects of the general system an opportunity happened, can only the creator (author) of the code, well, or an advanced test case, to the creation of which an experienced master had a hand in creating.
The ideal solution is to do a checklist at the code level when not the person, but the object created by him takes care of the execution of his own functionality, and also controls his condition and his relations with other objects.
Internet promotion, SEO
Since the Internet has become available to the general public (and the topic "checklist as a test product" has always been available to the masses), a flood of monotonous ideas has poured into the field of SEO. Absolutely trivial sequences were offered, and completely real money was pounded out of gullible buyers on empty and groundless grounds.
The authors of the checklists were guided by clever words:
- technical component;
- internal content idealization;
- semantic filling of the resource core;
- content: as it is and how it should become;
- commercial moment, resource monetization;
- external circumstances;
- promotion region;
- behavioral moment in the image of the visitor, etc.
But the purpose of the smart words was money. Trusting buyers, paying for the "work" of the authors of checklists, stimulated the production of such products, which is not good at all. But this process led to the fact that the topic of promotion expanded to the maximum possible limit and created the conditions for the generalization of information.
Reproduction in the field of information is a natural process, and today anyone who wants to receive real promotion of their own resource in any way:
- minimum costs, through own potential;
- maximum costs, through a qualified master.
The checklist today is a real and effective tool for achieving the desired in its formal part and absolutely complete freedom in the creative moment of the achieved goal.
Virtual space of simple ideas
The material component in life, at work, in the socio-economic sphere as a whole has gained stability. The fundamental basis for successfully achieving the desired has become apparent. The checklist is an example of how the creative component went into virtual space.
The level of qualification of consumers and authors of ideas has moved to a new quality. This nullified the position and led to the formation of an assortment of new tasks and the need for new solutions. The world again became more perfect, and again a new quality was due to a simple and natural step forward.