Minimize Contention with Checkouts

Users have found the following techniques helpful in minimizing the contention with checkouts:

Do the checkouts only at night and in batch in the later stages of development, when subset usage is highest.
You want all developers to put a copy of the JCL in a JCL library to facilitate batch processing.
Keep the checkout JCL in a common PDS. Submit the JCL at night after migrations are complete.
Do emergency daytime checkouts only in batch.
Use electronic mail to communicate emergency checkouts to team members. Try to schedule the activities of team members to spread out the processing load.
Stagger the checkouts across the team so that not everyone does a checkout every night or single-thread checkouts at night.
Check out subsets for two separate tasks. Checking out two subsets lets you keep working if checking in the first subset was unable to complete.

Note: If you use batch checkout, do a manual transfer of the file to the workstation.