Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
of automating something is simply describing the process accurately. If a playbook does
that, the actual coding is relatively easy.
Tasks That Are Not Worth Automating
Somethingsarenotworthautomating because theyhappeninfrequently,theyaretoodiffi-
cult to automate, or the process changes so often that automation is not possible. Automa-
tionisaninvestment intimeandeffortandthereturnoninvestment (ROI)doesnotalways
make automation viable.
Nevertheless, there are some common cases that are worth automating. Often when
thoseareautomated,themorerarecases(
edge cases
)canbeconsolidatedoreliminated.In
manysituations,thenewlyautomatedcommoncaseprovidessuchsuperiorservicethatthe
edge-case customers will suddenly lose their need to be so unique.
Benefits of Automating the Common Case
At one company there were three ways that virtual machines were being provi-
sioned. All three were manual processes, and customers often waited days until
a system administrator was available to do the task. A project to automate pro-
visioning was stalled because of the complexity of handling all three variations.
Users of the two less common cases demanded that their provisioning process be
different because they were (in their own eyes) unique and beautiful snowflakes.
They had very serious justifications based on very serious (anecdotal) evidence
and waved their hands vigorously to prove their point. To get the project moving,
it was decided to automate just the most common case and promise the two edge
cases would be added later.
This was much easier to implement than the original all-singing, all-dancing,
provisioningsystem.Withtheinitialautomation,provisioningtimewasreducedto
a few minutes and could happen without system administrator involvement. Pro-
visioning could even happen at night and on weekends. At that point an amazing
thinghappened.Theothertwocasessuddenlydiscoveredthattheiruniquenesshad
vanished! They adopted the automated method. The system administrators never
automated the two edge cases and the provisioning system remained uncomplic-
ated and easy to maintain.
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