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Deciding on When to Automate

Jeffrey Hicks shares some hard-earned wisdom:

I’ve been scripting and automating things since the days of DOS 3.3, beginning with batch files. It always felt like magic. I could cast a charm simply by typing a few characters on a keyboard. Naturally, my magic skills went from batch files to VBScript to PowerShell. Throughout it all, I’ve also had an internal decision tree regarding automation. Over the years, I’ve seen IT pros new to scripting and automation needlessly struggle. Often it is due to a deficiency in their decision tree. Today, I thought I’d help you nurture yours.

There’s a lot of good advice here about where the automation inflection point is, choosing the right tool, and performing research first before trying to jump into a project.