Automation gives you consistency. If you automate the incorrect process, you’ll get it done consistently wrong.
It still is a win because you’ll have a better chance on diagnosing and improving something that fails the same way as opposed to some manual process that has been done in a dozen different incorrect ways and you learn nothing from mistakes because there are no automated controls to feed back into.
Most people and organizations have a strong negative gut reaction when automation does something wrong but are okay when a manual process yields mistakes because we largely accept humans as fallible (at most, someone gets fired, and more bureaucracy is introduced), but the long-term economics of automation look ultimately better.
I’ve seen time and time again apparently innocent manual processes that, when not recognized as a liability, rapidly turn into entire departments (and entire management hierarchies), at which point it’s impossible to improve, because changing culture is harder than changing code. Having enough instances of that is what creates corporate whales without competitiveness.
It still is a win because you’ll have a better chance on diagnosing and improving something that fails the same way as opposed to some manual process that has been done in a dozen different incorrect ways and you learn nothing from mistakes because there are no automated controls to feed back into.
Most people and organizations have a strong negative gut reaction when automation does something wrong but are okay when a manual process yields mistakes because we largely accept humans as fallible (at most, someone gets fired, and more bureaucracy is introduced), but the long-term economics of automation look ultimately better.
I’ve seen time and time again apparently innocent manual processes that, when not recognized as a liability, rapidly turn into entire departments (and entire management hierarchies), at which point it’s impossible to improve, because changing culture is harder than changing code. Having enough instances of that is what creates corporate whales without competitiveness.