Implementation Checklist (Before Launch)

Walk through the ten basics that most often go missing before a launch, ask to be shown rather than told, and decide on the evidence. The full fifty-item checklist and a score sit in the optional sections at the end.

Mixed evidence: the surgical safety checklist (Haynes et al., 2009) is the famous case, but checklist effects have not been uniform across settings. The ten areas are a practitioner sampling of the conditions that implementation science has catalogued (Damschroder et al., 2009). Score bands on this page are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• A project, service change or product is about to go live and you want to find the gaps while they are cheap.
• You have inherited a launch date and need to know whether it is realistic.
• A sponsor asks "are we ready?" and you want an answer that rests on things you saw.

Skip it when:

• You are still deciding what to build or whether to proceed: use 8.13 SMART Recommendation Builder or 8.16 Board Decision Prep Sheet.
• Your estimate of time and cost is the doubt: use 8.22 Project Estimate Reality Check.

Checklists carry real evidence and a real caveat. The famous demonstration is the surgical safety checklist (Haynes et al., 2009), but effects have not been uniform across settings, so treat the evidence as mixed. Implementation science has catalogued the conditions that decide whether a new practice takes hold, from leadership engagement to fit with daily work (Damschroder et al., 2009); the ten areas below are a practitioner sampling of them. The often repeated claim that the great majority of initiatives fail rests on weak and circular evidence, so the argument here is not a scary statistic. It is that a missing owner, no baseline or unaddressed resistance is cheap to fix before launch and expensive after.

Read the areas as behavior checks, not paperwork. The owner row matters most, because every other box depends on that person. The baseline in the metrics row is the one gap that cannot be closed after launch. And a Conditional Go quietly treated as Go is how checklists fail.

Project and launch date:

Owner and sponsor (roles):

Illustrative example: the organization and numbers are made up.

A Norwegian municipality plans to open its library for self-service evening hours from 1 April. The deputy head checks the ten areas two weeks ahead. Goal: Ready. Owner: Ready, the head of library services has the budget and takes the weekly call. Governance: Gap, the insurance review for unstaffed hours has not been signed. Risks: Ready, with a Plan B of one staffed evening if the door system fails. Metrics: Gap, nobody has counted current evening visitors, so there is no baseline. Team: Ready. Ethics: Ready after a check that the hours do not replace staffed daytime hours.

Top gaps: insurance sign-off (owner: the municipal property manager, by 15 March) and a two-week visitor count (owner: the deputy head, starting Monday). Decision: Conditional Go, if the insurance is signed by 15 March, otherwise launch moves to 1 May. The condition is written in the sponsor's minutes.