So, HN, what do you automate? What tools do you use for that?
I usually evaluate a few things, in this order: 1. How much time will it take to do manually vs automated? 2. What are the chances I'm going to have to do this again? 3. Is it useful to just me, or other people too? 4. Do I get any value by doing this without automation? (e.g. will I gain insight by taking time to go through this process, that I would miss if I built a tool to just do it)
...but I suppose that's mostly for "tasks" whereas you mean "processes" in the sense that a process is more difficult to automate because it has more steps and dependencies. In that case, I think there are more evaluation criteria like:
-What is the risk of doing this manually and screwing it up?
About the tools I just search if there is anything that can do it, otherwise I will try to code it.
There is not much more to say about it.
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In answer to the original question, we're similar to the poster; if it's a non-trivial task that will need to be done more than a few times, we'll set up a script.