In this best practices article, we’ll share our tips for using checklists in MeisterTask to improve your workflow and drive project completion.  

Top Tips for Checklists 

Making checklists is an intuitive exercise, but using them in a truly efficient way takes some practice. Here’s our advice for how you can drive increased efficiency with checklists:

1. Write checklists regularly - the more often you do, the sooner it’ll become second nature. Checklists break your tasks down into a series of manageable sub-tasks, which can be checked off to instill a sense of achievement and productivity. By breaking tasks into action items, your tasks and projects are more likely to be completed on time, and correctly.
   
   
2. Mention other users in checklist items to show responsibilities and delegate tasks. Delegating checklist items to your colleagues gives accountability and increases the likelihood that action items are completed. Plus, your colleagues will be notified immediately so nothing will be missed. 
   
   
   
   
3. Clarify your expectations - explain to your team that you expect them to check off action items as they complete them. If this is agreed upon, you won’t lose time chasing assignees to find out about task progress. Instead, you’ll be able to easily see everything just by opening the task.
   
   
4. Use checklist templates to save time and ensure consistency in quality. Be sure to invest enough time to create a good template which can be used in a variety of tasks.
   
   
   

Checklist Template Best Practices

Checklist templates are predefined checklists which can be reused for many different tasks.

1. Choose an appropriate title for your checklist template. A fitting title explains when the template can be used, so your team knows exactly when to insert the template without having to read all the items. For example, if a checklist template is called "Blog", you might not know exactly when it will be relevant, whereas if it's called "Blog Post Publication Checklist", you'll know exactly when to add it to a task. 
   
   
2. Find the right balance between specificity and versatility. Of course, a good template should be versatile - you want to be able to apply it to a variety of similar tasks. At the same time, templates must have enough specificity to actually make them useful. Totally generic “all-encompassing” checklists won’t add any value and may create confusion or frustration. Try to find this perfect balance to give your templates real utility.
   
   
3. Keep checklist items clear and easy to follow. Checklists are supposed to add clarity and make it easier to complete tasks successfully - if your language is complicated, your team might have to reach out to you for clarification, adding friction to your workflow. Do your team (and yourself) a favor and keep things clear.
   
   
4. Don’t add more than 8 action items per checklist. For some tasks, more will be necessary. However, if you notice that tasks often contain over 8 checklist action items, you might want to consider whether these tasks should instead be their own project.
   
   
5. Make templates for tasks with repeated, consistent workflows. As a result, these tasks will take less time because you’ll have a greater sense of direction and will know how to get started immediately. You can also use checklist templates for tasks where quality control is important because they give you a frame of reference to cross-check quality.
   
   
   

Examples of Checklist Templates

Let’s take a look at the workflow of a marketing manager: When a marketing manager is overseeing the production of marketing content, certain stages will always be involved regardless of the specific topic. In such cases, checklist templates come in handy. 

The checklist items in the image below combine versatility and specificity: They are vague enough to be applied to a variety of marketing projects, but simultaneously specific enough for other colleagues to know exactly what needs to be done to complete each stage. This makes the checklist useful as a reference point for the assignee and helps ensure important steps are not forgotten.

For those working with finances, quality control is especially important and checklist templates can ensure a higher degree of control. Irrespective of the specific task at hand, when sending invoices, you'll need to be certain that each invoice is received, approved and paid. How can you increase the likelihood that these three subtasks are completed? By defining them in a checklist template which can be inserted in a range of similar tasks.

From the examples above, you can see that checklists can both save you time and ensure a certain level of quality. Invest a little time in creating good templates for your team, and you’ll quickly see that tasks are completed better, consistently. 

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