Todays blog will talk about automation and why it's so important, especially in the modern IT world where day to day life moves at such a fast pace at times it can seem like a rush to keep up. Within the IT world automation is used to create a step of repeatable processes called tasks to reduce human input and save time.
Saves time
Good automation should save you time , I say should because we want to write automation that is fault proof! If your having to spend just as long to troubleshoot your automation then the processes isn't automated at all! When automation is written well, what sometimes may take you a few hours can be done in just a simple 1 button click saving you time and effort to focus on other things.
Improves reliability
Automation improves reliability, it creates a standaised way of working as the steps are in repeatable processes, you should really aim to write unit tests/ intergration tests around your code to ensure the code is indeed doing what you expect. You should also make sure your automation can catch and report failures to insure that these are caught quickly, when working on things like Server Builds automation can give you a set of repeatable steps that you can run on 100s of servers to ensure they are all built the correct way!
Ability to adapt
Automation should be able to adapt and change, as new processes come in your automation should be able to be updated and changed easily, what we don't want is pages and pages of spaghetti code- everything needs to be organised in its place to ensure changes can be picked up and implemented easily. I see automation as never ending, tasks can always be improved so is always something you should look to review and tweak where necessary.
Challenges
One main challenge with automation is that it is only as good as the code! We need to write code to be fault tolerant and re-runable if necessary. We also need to make sure we are flagging failures as appropriate to avoid issues and things being missed. Whenever I write an automated task I think to myself how can I be sure the automation is done what it says it has? Writing checks can improve the quality and provide further safety nets and instil confidence in your code which can only be a good thing!
Sometimes people can have a negative view on automation- the fear that it's designed to "cut costs" and require less people. I simply see automation as a way of taking those repeatable tasks away which gives you time to focus on new exciting and sometimes way more important things!
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