What do you use checklists for?

Question

Apart from the archetypical code-review checklist, what are some good places to use checklists in software engineering?

Answer 1

My day-job has a checklist that walks through items needed before, and after development.

So a checklist to ensure that all documentation is there to meet the standards, then a checklist to affirm that all changes have been tracked/recorded according to the standard.

It isn't perfect, but does help in some cases.

Answer 2

The Braidy Tester has a truly evil checklist of testing edge cases, including:

• Verify correct handling of file access via UNC
• Low memory
• Pen and Speech Input

Answer 3

Code-review checklists are concerned with development issues (robust, scalable, extensible, requirement-compliance, ...)

But you can define checklists for other issues of software engineering, especially when you need to release what you are coding.

In that case, a:

• pre-delivery checklist can be enforced.
• a 'release checklist' is useful, to check that all critical or show-stopper bugs have been addressed, is the packaging has been done properly, and so on.

Answer 4

• Test check list
• Deployment check list
• New developer that came inside a team check list (what he should read about the current project, create account on CMS, email, etc)
• UML checklist when we are done creating a graph.