My work-in-progress list of automation justification.

Procrastinating automation of a task is the same as committing to manually working a task.

For my future consideration, consider these questions or comments in order to justify automating a task:

  • When a task requires work outside of normal business hours, consider automating.
  • When many tasks all come due at the same time and everyone’s time constraints are real, consider automating.
  • When a task’s traditional time due coincides with holidays and popular vacation windows, consider automating.
  • When a task is a checklist that never changes, consider automating.

I’m all about cutting down on human error, effort, and time spent. If I still have work to do, I haven’t automated enough. If I can explain how to do something, it can be automated. If I can’t explain how to do something, I can’t repeatably do that thing.