I have written before about lessons software development professionals can learn from Atul Gawande.

Cem Kaner read an article about how doctors can use checklists to radically improve patient care and reflected on his own background in both law and testing. The result is the presentation The Value of Checklists and the Danger of Scripts: What Legal Training Suggests for Testers. I found the second half of the presentation most fascinating with the many examples of how lawyers use checklists and how this can apply to testers.

Kaner’s point about learning – scripted testing does not make the person running the test a better tester. Checklists encourages the tester to think. I couldn’t agree more.