Practice : Evidence Checklists in Decisions
Purpose and Strategic Importance
Evidence Checklists provide a lightweight structure to ensure decisions are informed by data and research. They reduce bias, encourage transparency, and promote evidence-based culture.
Without checklists, teams default to opinions or incomplete information, leading to poor decisions.
Description of the Practice
- Simple checklists used before making key product decisions.
- Prompts include: What evidence do we have? What assumptions remain? What trade-offs are explicit?
- Checklists become part of governance and discovery rituals.
How to Practise It (Playbook)
1. Getting Started
- Draft a short evidence checklist template.
- Pilot in team planning or portfolio reviews.
- Train facilitators to embed checklist use.
2. Scaling and Maturing
- Standardise checklists across all product decisions.
- Expand to include ethical and trust dimensions.
- Incorporate into decision journals and trade-off logs.
3. Team Behaviours to Encourage
- Discipline in evidence gathering.
- Transparency in assumptions and gaps.
- Courage to delay decisions if evidence is insufficient.
4. Watch Out For…
- Checklists becoming tick-box exercises.
- Overloading checklists with too many questions.
- Ignoring evidence that challenges preferred outcomes.
5. Signals of Success
- Qualitative: Teams confidently explain decisions with supporting evidence.
- Quantitative: Increase in decisions backed by validated data.