One of the most famous topics today is Automation in the IT era. There are many different interpretations - as usual - therefore it is so important to define some levels of automation and the most interesting fields to focus on.

There are two main areas of automations: business function automation and systems operation automations. Another differentiation is if the process which is automated means the it is running with zero touch or the automation means that users of the process gets predefined steps, tasks to execute.

In most cases the last should precede the first since the process would be clearly defined to automate. A special subset, which is mentioned nowadays is the machine learning based single-step "process" execution like increase temp space under a given database or so. Let's not focus on machine learning based controls but on real processes instead! Finally what we see is a maturity level: uncontrolled, defined and auto-executed.

The most interesting aspect I would highlight here is the differentiation between the defined and the auto-executed level. Interesting because two much auto-execution in a situation when something still require manual interaction can cause the problem of staff has no enough experience! On the other hand lower level of auto-execution than possible mean higher cost to the optimal. One more aspect is that auto-execution requires change of automatism in case of process changes. The great example of automation is the flight-industry: almost everything is defined or automated. Defined is the checklists and automated is executed by the auto-pilot. The balance is driven by the aspect of keeping the pilots ready to fly while minimising the boring repeatable task by the auto-pilot.

Please share your thoughts about the right balance of automation!