Stop doing this: automating the clicks

It's a well-meant mistake. That's exactly why it sticks around. Every team that makes it can explain why, and the explanation holds up right until the system has to survive its second year.

Most automation projects reproduce the steps a person took, which locks in a process designed around a limitation that no longer applies. The work worth removing is the deciding, not the typing.

THE STEPS ARE AN ARTEFACT

When you watch someone do a task, what you see is the task plus the shape of the tools they had. Copy all of it and you've automated the workaround too, including the export, the reformat, and the re-import that only exist because two systems don't talk.

The question that gets past this is embarrassingly simple: what is this person deciding? Usually it's one or two judgements buried in twenty minutes of mechanical shuffling. Automate the shuffling and you've saved eighteen minutes. Understand the judgement and you can sometimes remove the whole task.

WHERE THE JUDGEMENT ACTUALLY IS

You find it by asking what would change their answer. If nothing would, if the outcome is determined entirely by the inputs, it isn't a judgement, it's a rule nobody has written down, and it belongs in code with a name.

If something would change it, that's real judgement, and it deserves to stay with a person. What you can do is bring them everything they need in one place and remove the twenty minutes of gathering. That's usually a bigger win than the automation anyone asked for.

This is where the reconciliation spreadsheet comes from. Somebody built it once to settle an argument. Now roughly 40,000 loads a month depends on a file with one author, no tests, and a filename ending in _v4_final.

SPEEDING UP THE WRONG PROCESS

The failure mode is a faster version of a process that shouldn't exist. It's hard to spot afterwards because the metrics improve: the task takes less time, throughput's up, everyone's pleased. The unnecessary work just happens more efficiently now.

The way we avoid it is to insist on describing the outcome the task produces before designing anything. Then ask whether there's a shorter route from the inputs to that outcome. Sometimes there is, and it doesn't resemble the original steps at all.

The bill shows up in the handover notes: nine paragraphs on which of two systems to trust for a given load tender. When two carriers were committed against the same trailer, it took two days to work out what had actually happened, in what order.

WHERE IT GOES WRONG

• Automating an export-and-reimport that only existed because two systems couldn't talk.
• Encoding a rule nobody had written down, so its logic is now in a script with no name.
• A faster version of a process that shouldn't exist, with metrics that look like success.
• Removing the person from the one step that genuinely needed judgement.

Find the decision. Automate the gathering, and leave the judgement with a person.

THE REPLACEMENT

The fix isn't more discipline. Discipline wears off. The fix is a structure where the wrong thing can't be said, so nobody has to remember the rule at 3am.