Recently, as a function of rapid growth, we were encountering problems with newly released features and functionality due to missing critical considerations in the ticketing process. In other words, we would release functionality and then realize it had product impacts we didn’t foresee.

Inspired by the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, I created a new JIRA ticket template that operates like a checklist. In addition to the standard requirements and acceptance criteria, the product team member writing the story must go through a checklist of key considerations. This approach ensures that they consider all impacts, including (but not limited to):

• Product area impacts & implications – what areas of product does it effect and where might we be surprised?
• Upstream and downstream data impacts – Does this change any data coming in or out of the experience?
• State management – empty states, loading, status, errors, etc
• Feature flags – do we want to be able to turn this off at any point?
• Performance concerns – could the introduction of this feature create any problems with application performance, and what are we going to do about it?
• Any other risks?

This checklist concept is starting to reduce the number of reopens and follow on tickets and limits “oh shit moments” by ensuring that we are not surprised by issues we didn’t anticipate.

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