Choosing What to Automate First

When a team decides to invest in automation, the instinct is often to start with the most painful process. That's not always the right starting point. The most painful process is often painful because it's inconsistent, under-documented, or politically sensitive, all of which make it a hard first project.

We look at three things instead: how repeatable the process actually is, how well-defined the rules are (even if those rules live in someone's head rather than a document), and how reversible a mistake would be. A process that's highly repeatable, has clear-enough rules, and has low-stakes failure modes is a strong first candidate, even if it isn't the most painful one on the list.

Starting there does two things. It gets a working system into production faster, which builds internal confidence in automation as a strategy. And it gives you a template, built on a real process, that makes the second and third automation projects faster and lower-risk than the first.