The Automation Slippery Slope

A mantra of being DevOps is to automate your problems away. While this is a great idea to ensure you no longer have to do those manual tasks, there is a decision making process you should follow to ensure automation is the right answer. When there is too much automation around certain types of issues, the automations become their own maintenance item.

Before automating, consider all the factors involved to ensure it is the right thing to be doing for the situation you are trying to correct.

What to Automate

---

Let's do a review of automation candidates, here is what I have have seen automated in the past. (Please note: the presence on this list does not mean these should ever be automated internally.)

• Data monitoring

• Data fixes

• Software installation

• Application monitoring

• Server updates

• Infrastructure creation

To Automate or not?

---

Before thinking automation is the solution, consider these factors to ensure this is the right thing to be doing.

• Product deficiency. When automating tasks around the software written by your company, the first question to ask is: should the product be doing this work instead? Is it wise to be adding functionality to the product outside of the product? Can the product be engineered to do this task instead?

• Technology problem. Can the automation you are trying to create be solved by utilizing a new technology instead? Are there 3rd party vendors out there who can do these same tasks in a more rigorous manner?

Track!

---

You have decided to automate a process to make your life easier, great! Now how is that tracked, maintained, updated, accounted for as time goes on and changes are made to the system? Its best to rigorously track these in a list where everyone on the team can edit to ensure you keep on top of the various automations scattered throughout your stack. Its best to group them into logical buckets and ensure you are using 1 technology per type of automation.

Automations are their own software within your company and should be considered a maintenance item. When deployments / change controls come through its sometimes wise to review the automations list to ensure you won't break anything else in the process.