Would you mind sharing more details from one or more of your examples, or a summary of your experiences and tips (either here or in a blog post)? I would be interested to read, and from the looks of this thread, others would be too! I'm in a different field (law practice) but I'd love to consider how I could apply this approach in my firm.
Often these are setup scripts or similar for a codebase, so you might have a readme with instructions like
1. Update the submodules by running ...
2. Install volta
3. Run `volta ...`
4. Setup a user account
5. Sync the dev database by running `...`
Now you can have that as documentation, or you can set it up as a checklist that runs the user through it and tells them what to do at each stage. Then you can swap out asking the user to do something to just doing it (e.g. 1, 3 and 5 are easy and 2 & 4 are at least less so).
> I'm in a different field (law practice) but I'd love to consider how I could apply this approach in my firm
The starting point is to consider any checklist type steps you have. Forgive me if I make up an example that sounds daft in your field but perhaps you have something like
Finalising client.
1. Ensure invoices are filed
2. Check all invoices have been paid
3. Send email to client
4. Set status of account to CLOSED on lawversionofsalesforcemaybethatsjustsalesforce
You can have this as a list of instructions. You could then change it to a checklist a person goes through and says which they've done. Then you might spot that #2 actually could just hit an API and check they've been paid. And #4 could be done too. You didn't have to automate 1 and 3, but you started with a useful thing and then incrementally removed busywork.
The approach is both really useful and also not really that big of a deal. The first step is just moving a checklist to a small program that lists the checklist. You're not automating anything. But then it makes the job of automating something in the list far smaller.
