Therefore, rather than focusing on
automating what’s easy, focus on automating the boring parts (unlike you,
computers love repetition), the difficult parts (reduce error-prone steps),
and the parts that need to happen
when you would rather be asleep. As
a human, you are better than computers at improvisation and being flexible, exercising judgment, and coping with variations. So, don’t fret over
not being able to automate deciding
which of four paths to take when that
decision is purely a judgment call.
Instead, automate the four paths but
leave the selection process to you!
Documentation as automation
lowers the bar for what can be automated, enabling you to improve tasks
you would have avoided in both the
Leftover Principle and the Compensatory Principle.
Ambiguous Requirements
The computer scientists reading this
piece might be wondering why I’m
not recommending a formal require-ments-gathering stage or other more
rigorous software-engineering best
practices.
The reality is that an organization’s IT environment is usually so
opaque and amorphous that requirements cannot be written beyond a basic statement of desired results. The
first time one attempts to use an API
call is more a matter of trial and error
than following instructions. Nothing
works the first time. It is hours (or
days) of guesswork, exploration, and
discovery. Nearly every operating system, framework, and IT system contribute to this mess. IT does not live in
a world of high school physics where
one has the luxury of an infinitely
large, flat, frictionless surface. IT lives
in a world that is a squishy swamp of
vendor promises and “damned if you
do, damned if you don’t” choices, all
made worse by authentication systems that seem to be designed to
work only on sunny days.
Early in the discovery process it is
not obvious exactly what to do, what
will work, or how long it will take to
code. It is more exploration than rote
execution. It reminds me of a framed
sign that hung in my father’s chemistry
lab that read, “If we knew what we were
doing, it wouldn’t be called research.”
Automation and documentation
democratize the work, lowering the
bar so that others may do the task.
Any positive progress through the
four phases enables more people on a
team to do a task, thus enabling you
to distribute work among your peers
and reduce single points of failure.
You might be the only person with the
knowledge and experience to do the
task, but a little documentation can
empower others to do it instead, even
if they don’t have a deep understand-
ing of the technology. Even if the
documentation covers only the most
common situation and is full of warn-
ings such as “This procedure won’t
work if the user has [insert technical
details]” or “If you get the following
error, don’t try to fix it yourself. Call
Mary or Bob.” Future updates to the
document can cover those edge cases.
You don’t need everyone on the team
to have your years of experience, just
the wisdom to follow directions and
contact you if they get stuck.
These benefits save you time in
ways other than just making the process faster. They make you more efficient, reduce the work for the entire
team by reducing the complexity that
must be managed, or create a work-force multiplier that enables other
people to take work off your plate.
By creating a culture of continuous
improvement, constantly taking baby
steps along the four phases, the work
becomes less stressful and easier
to manage. While the other reasons
listed here are quite logical, what motivates me to maintain this discipline
is more emotional: I want to reduce
stress and have more time for creativity and joy.
The Leftover Principle
Focusing on automating the easy
parts means the work left for humans
is the difficult stuff. That means automation just made life worse for
you. 2 Ironic, eh? Weren’t computers
supposed to make life easier? This is
called the Leftover Principle, as discussed in this column in 2015.3
The solution to this is the Compensatory Principle: People and machines
should each do what they are good at
and not attempt what they don’t do
well. That is, each group should compensate for the other’s deficiencies. 1
By creating
a culture of
continuous
improvement,
constantly taking
baby steps along
the four phases,
the work becomes
less stressful and
easier to manage.