I M A G E B Y P A B L O P R A T

traditional code, so to speak, but the process has become much more automated.

In the future these smatterings of command-line snippets will be combined into one big program that automates the entire process. This tool will be used as the basis for a Web-based self-service portal. This will allow users to do the task on demand, seven days a week, even when the sysadmins are asleep.

Meanwhile, the other engineer, the one who was “too busy to write code,” is no closer to getting started.

The difference between these two
engineers is that one is willing to do
work manually just to get the task
done. The other is willing to do work
tions and augmented the command-
line snippets he had recorded.

As he repeated this process over and over, the document evolved to be much better. The example names and numbers in the command lines were replaced by variables. Ambiguous statements such as “make sure everything is OK” were replaced by checklists of things to be tested, which were soon augmented by commands that performed the tests.

Soon this manual process was feel-
ing more and more like real automa-
tion. There was less thinking, more
following orders. Doing the process
“manually” was more like copying
and pasting command-line snippets
from the document and pasting them
in his terminal window. I call this Pas-
teOps.

By doing this in the open, with collaborative document systems such as a wiki or Git repository, coworkers are able to join in: Mary fixes a command line that broke on a certain class of machine. Joe does some Web searches and soon a step that previously required a mouse click is replaced by a command.

As more and more coworkers adopt this work style, the entire team contributes to the constant goal of better automation.

This engineer, who began with the same time pressure and other obstacles as the other less successful engineer, has not yet written any