“Don’t automate complexity”

You ever hear someone say “We can just automate it,” and feel almost certain it’s a bad idea? I’m always fighting with this. And I can’t always explain why I feel like it’s a bad idea to automate certain processes.

And then on Saturday I was paging through Implementing Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck in a thrift store and found this short section:

Don’t automate complexity.

We are not helping our customers if we simply automate a complex or messy process; we would simply be encasing a process filled with waste in a straight jacket of software complexity. Any process that is a candidate for automation should first be clarified and simplified, possibly even removing existing automation. Only then can the process be clearly understood and the leverage points for effective automation identified.