Towards a science of checklists

Abstract

Checklists are in use in many work domains, including aviation, manufacturing, quality control, and healthcare. Despite their adoption, the literature shows both breadth and persistence of problems with the organizational usage of checklists. In this paper, we conduct a structured literature survey to analyze checklists from the perspective of informational artifacts. Our contribution is a respective conceptualization of checklists and a rigorous analysis of their problems. As we will argue, these insights help to consider how the capabilities of IT systems can be leveraged to improve checklists and address their problematic aspects. We present our work as a basis for IT-oriented research into a relevant yet under-examined information practice in organizational work routines.