Finding
A manual conveyor
A process that repeats identically and is performed by hand each time.
Somebody opens four tabs, copies from one into another, checks the result, and sends it on. Next week they do it again. The steps have not changed in months, which is exactly what makes them worth automating and exactly why nobody has: a task that never surprises anyone also never becomes urgent.
The tell is that the person doing it can describe the whole thing in under two minutes. Anything describable that fast is a specification, and a specification is most of the work.
The other tell is the reverse of the usual complaint. People do not say it is hard; they say it is fine. It is fine, and it costs a day a week, and both of those are true at once.
The cheapest condition to treat and the one left longest.
How it shows up
- Somebody opens the same browser tab at the same time every morning.
- The written instructions contain the phrase "then copy column D".
- Two systems hold the same numbers and a person keeps them equal.
- The same file is renamed by hand every week.
- Mistakes cluster on Mondays and on the day after a holiday.
How to put a number on it
Time one full run with a stopwatch rather than from memory. Then multiply: times a week, times the people who do it, times forty-six working weeks, times the hourly rate you actually pay. That is the annual price of the tab.
Above about two hours a week the arithmetic stops being close. Below about one a quarter it inverts, and writing the automation costs more than the work ever will — a client of mine spent six months on a script for a quarterly report and it never did run.
What to do this week
Record one run — the screen, and the person narrating what they are doing and why. That recording is the specification, and it is more accurate than anything either of you would have written down afterwards.
Then automate the ordinary eighty per cent and leave the exceptions to a person. A rough script that covers most cases frees most of the time; waiting for the version that handles everything is how this ends up untouched for another year.
The next step
Bring the number to a call. Once the hours a week are on the table, the arithmetic decides the rest in about ten minutes.
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