For grown-ups
How to use it
- Add steps from the suggested list (they apply to almost any project — a game, an app, a zine, a bake sale) or type your own.
- Check steps off as you do them. When everything is checked, the banner reads ready to ship — a calm state, not a grade.
Why a launch checklist
"I'll launch it soon" is a wish; a checklist is a plan. Naming the concrete moves — write a one-line pitch, ask a stranger to try it, fix the confusing first minute, pick a day — turns shipping from a vague intention into a short list of doable things. That's ordinary project-management practice, at a scale a teenager's own project fits. We claim no launch outcome; it's a planning aid.
No pressure, no counting
No streak, no score, no "how many launches." The list is yours to build, work, and clear. Everything is on this device only.
Where this idea comes from· 1935 · Haynes 2009
The checklist
On 30 October 1935 Boeing’s new Model 299 bomber crashed on take-off at Wright Field, Ohio, killing both pilots. The crew had left the control locks on. The plane was too complicated to fly from memory, so the test pilots wrote a short list to read before take-off.
One thing to hold: A go/no-go list: a few checks, each answered yes or not yet, read out before you ship.
Why it matters: In 2009 a study in eight hospitals around the world found that after a 19-item surgical checklist came in, deaths after surgery fell from 1.5% to 0.8%. Atul Gawande told the story in The Checklist Manifesto (2009).
What we don’t know: The 1935 crash is the traditional origin of the checklist, not a proven first. A later study in Ontario, Canada did not find the same drop in deaths.
Two words:
Checklist
What is the one check you always forget?Ship
To send the finished thing out. What has to be true before you ship?