The Value of Checklists

The modern era of checklists began with a tragedy in aviation. In 1935, during a U.S. Army Air Corps flight competition for a new long-range bomber, Boeing’s advanced Model 299 (later the B-17 “Flying Fortress”) took off, then abruptly stalled and crashed, killing two crew members. Investigation revealed no mechanical flaw – it was pilot error. The aircraft was too complex to fly from memory alone: the seasoned pilot had forgotten to disengage a critical locking mechanism on the controls amidst the many new tasks required. Rather than deem the plane unfit, Boeing’s team introduced a simple yet ingenious tool – a pilot’s checklist. This short list covered the basic steps for takeoff, flight, landing, and other operations, many of them seemingly obvious. Armed with checklists, test pilots flew the new bomber 1.8 million miles without a single accident, proving the aircraft’s viability. The 1935 crash thus birthed the aviation pre-flight checklist – a tool now standard in cockpits worldwide to prevent human oversight from causing disaster.

From Aviation to NASA

The checklist discipline that took root in aviation was later adopted by space exploration. NASA inherited and expanded the culture of exhaustive checklists to manage the extreme complexity and stakes of spaceflight. During the Apollo program, checklists proliferated “to every corner” of the spacecraft’s environment, guiding astronauts through each procedure. Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins referred to the onboard checklists as the mission’s “fourth crewmember” – ensuring nothing was overlooked. Astronauts had cuff checklists strapped to their spacesuit arms during moonwalks so that critical steps for experiments and safety were literally at hand. Ground crews and astronauts continuously updated these checklists to keep procedures accurate and account for anomalies. The rigorous use of checklists continued into the Space Shuttle era, where every launch, spacewalk, and landing was guided by extensive written procedures. By codifying standard processes, checklists free NASA engineers and astronauts to focus on surprises or new challenges.

Fom Apollo to Medicine

In modern medicine, checklists have sparked a revolution in patient safety. Pioneering this movement was Dr. Atul Gawande, whose 2009 book The Checklist Manifesto drew inspiration from aviation and NASA to tackle human error in hospitals. One of the most celebrated examples came from Dr. Peter Pronovost at Johns Hopkins. Pronovost observed that a routine procedure — inserting a central line (IV catheter) in ICU patients — often led to deadly infections, simply because busy staff would skip basic sterilization steps. He introduced a simple 5-step checklist (e.g. wash hands, clean patient’s skin, use sterile drapes, etc.) to enforce best practices. The results were stunning: infection rates plunged from 11% to essentially zero. When this checklist was implemented across Michigan ICUs for 18 months, it virtually eliminated line infections, saving an estimated 1,500 lives and $175 million in costs. Such success earned Pronovost recognition — Time magazine declared his work “saved more lives than that of any laboratory scientist in the past decade.” Gawande and the World Health Organization then expanded the idea to surgery. They developed the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, a short 19-item checklist used in operating rooms worldwide. In pilot studies across eight hospitals, this checklist cut major surgical complications by about one-third and halved surgical death rates (from 1.5% to 0.8%) — a staggering improvement greater than many new drugs could achieve. Notably, many surgeons were initially skeptical, finding it “surprising” that a humble checklist could improve outcomes in such a high-skill field. Yet after seeing unprecedented results, even doubters became strong supporters of the tool. Over the past decade, surgical checklists have spread to over 70% of countries’ hospitals, and they are credited with dramatically improving teamwork, communication, and consistency in care. Today, from simple timeout checklists used before an incision (to confirm patient identity, procedure, etc.) to emergency protocols, healthcare has embraced checklists to reduce human error — echoing the trajectory seen in aviation decades earlier.

The Cognitive Benefits of Checklists

Beyond these historical anecdotes, there is a robust body of expert opinion and evidence on why checklists work so well. High-stakes industries teach us that human memory and attention are fallible, especially under stress or complexity. As Gawande explains, professionals fail for two reasons: ignorance (lack of knowledge) or ineptitude (failure to apply what we know). We usually know the right steps, but complexity and pressure make it hard to consistently execute them correctly. Our brains have limits on working memory and focus. We might hold millions of facts, but recalling the right detail at the right moment is the challenge, especially when juggling many tasks. This is where checklists become invaluable. A checklist acts as an external cognitive aid: it offloads the need to remember routine steps, allowing professionals to “lighten our cognitive load” and concentrate on higher-order problem solving. By spelling out the basics, a checklist frees up mental “RAM” for creative or critical thinking.

There are also clear psychological benefits. Using a checklist reduces stress and anxiety about forgetting something important. For example, airplane pilots and surgeons alike describe the calming effect of running through their checklist before a high-pressure event – it provides a sense of control and preparedness. Studies in healthcare have noted that checklists improve teamwork and communication, which in turn lowers cognitive stress on individual members (everyone knows their role and that all basics are covered). Checklists also instill discipline and humility. They serve as a check against overconfidence or complacency – even experts must acknowledge that memory can fail and that “stupid simple” steps matter profoundly. This mindset can combat the cognitive bias that “I’ve done this a thousand times, I won’t miss anything” which ironically is when mistakes often slip in. In sum, checklists function like a safety net for the brain: they catch the corner-case omissions and lapses in focus that human beings are prone to, thereby reducing errors and ensuring consistency.

Checklists for Sales Engineering

For technical sales engineers in the SaaS world, lives are not on the line. However, deals and client relationships are on the line, and enterprise software sales is extremeley complex. Pre-sales engineers find themselves juggling intricate product configurations, client requirements, environments, and stakeholders – a complexity not unlike a multi-engine airplane or an operating room full of equipment. Checklists can be just as game-changing in this realm of demos and evaluations as they have been in cockpits and ORs.

To illustrate, imagine a sales engineer preparing for a high-stakes cloud software demo for a major prospective customer. There are dozens of things to get right: the demo environment must be properly configured with the latest build; test data needs to be loaded; integrations to third-party systems must be live; network access at the client site has to be confirmed; backups (like slide decks or a recorded demo) should be ready in case of connectivity issues; the meeting invite with the correct video conferencing link and a dial-in backup must be set; and so on. It’s the day of the demo – under pressure, it’s all too easy to miss one small step. Perhaps the engineer forgot to switch an API key from a staging server to production, causing a feature to break in front of the client. Or they neglected to verify the web browser version on the presentation laptop, and it turns out to be incompatible with a new UI, leading to embarrassing glitches. These kinds of errors can derail deals that are worth six or seven figures to the company. And they are not far-fetched – ask any veteran sales engineer and you’ll hear “war stories” of demos that bombed due to an oversight that in hindsight was painfully obvious. Often the culprit isn’t the mythical “demo gods” or bad luck at all, but simply failing to prepare with proper diligence.

Practical Checklist Strategies for SaaS Sales Engineers

Embracing checklists in a technical sales engineering role can be straightforward and immensely rewarding. It’s not about adding bureaucracy – it’s about creating lightweight, flexible tools that ensure consistency. Here are some practical ways a SaaS pre-sales team can leverage checklists:

Demo Preparation Checklist
Proof-of-Concept (POC) Execution Checklist
Discovery and Qualification Checklist
RFP/RFI Response Checklist
Product Integration Checklist
Demo Environment Setup Checklist
Customer Onboarding Checklist (Post-Sale)
Competitive Analysis Checklist
Technical Win Checklist
Executive Presentation Checklist
Internal Handoff Checklist (to Services/Support)
Security and Compliance Checklist
Pre-Meeting Preparation Checklist

Finally, it’s worth noting that adopting checklists in a sales engineering team can foster continuous improvement. Encourage team members to update the checklists with lessons from each engagement (“investigate your failures” is Boorman’s rule #1). If a colleague encounters a new pitfall – say, a security questionnaire that delayed a deal because it wasn’t anticipated – that item can be added to the pre-sales process checklist for next time. Over time, the checklist becomes a knowledge repository of collective experience, sparing newcomers from repeating old mistakes. This kind of knowledge capture is exactly what high-reliability organizations like NASA do to improve over missions. In the fast-paced world of SaaS, where products and markets evolve quickly, having a checklist that is a living document can help the team adapt while maintaining consistency.