My Automation Manifesto

It was about two years ago when my journey of automation leadership started, and since then it’s been a pretty rocky road. Over those two years I’ve been through staff turnover, Covid and its associated budget impacts and hiring freezes, and organization wide restructuring through the Scaled Agile Framework. Through it all I’ve been slowly collecting thoughts and pithy phrases that I’ve found useful. Maybe over time they’ve become not just about Automation, but also things like organizational change and culture.

My wife says that only guys in cabins in the woods write “manifestos”, but then again agile started with a manifesto, so there’s some precedence in tech. And of course, the last thing the world needs is another white guy in tech sharing their opinions. But for whatever reason, some people find my insight valuable. Maybe my ideas aren’t especially unique in the canon of the world’s thinkers, but they do at least seem novel in my organization.

So here I am, trying to share them. Maybe nobody will ever read these, but elaborating on them might help me understand them better myself. And maybe I can share these with coworkers at least, and help someone out.

I’ve been collecting these ideas for two years, so this is by definition a living document. I’ll update this post as I write up more parts. I might be continually revising these even after they’re posted, who knows! This is an experiment for me.