What you’ll learn
- Choose a task small enough to understand and test.
- Map its inputs, decisions and review points.
- Describe a useful result before choosing tools.
Choose one recurring task.
A useful first automation begins with something you can describe clearly. Look for a task that happens often, follows a recognisable pattern and has an outcome someone actually needs.
Preparing a weekly report, collecting the details of an enquiry or routing a familiar support question can each be a starting point. Choose one. Write down who does the task today and what usually starts it.
Ask whether the task is worth improving. A rare task with a small amount of effort may deserve less attention than a routine that interrupts your team every day. This first decision is about understanding the work, not committing to a tool.
Map the work you do today.
Follow one real example from beginning to end. Record what comes in, the steps people take and what leaves the process. Include the checks that someone makes almost without thinking.
Those checks matter. A person may recognise that a spreadsheet is incomplete, ask a customer a follow-up question or wait for approval. Put those moments into the map so the workflow has somewhere to send an unusual case.
Worked example / Weekly report preparation
- Input: the approved source files for the week.
- Preparation: gather the inputs and flag missing information.
- Review: an analyst checks the draft and its context.
- Output: the reviewed report goes to the agreed destination.
Define the first useful result.
Describe what someone should receive at the end of the first version. A draft that is ready for review can be useful even when a person still makes the final decision.
Be specific about the format, destination and review. “Prepare the weekly report inputs in one place for the analyst” gives you something to inspect. You can ask whether the inputs are complete, whether the structure is useful and whether the right person receives them.
Choose tools after the flow is clear.
Now consider the tools already involved. A repeatable step may need a simple rule. A text-heavy task may benefit from AI assistance. A judgement call may belong with a person.
Check what information each tool needs and what happens when a step cannot finish. Keep the first version understandable enough that you can explain it to the person who will use it.
Before adding more steps, try the ordinary case and one awkward case. Use sample data while you are exploring. Review what the result tells you about the task, then decide what to improve.
Try it: write a four-line workflow brief.
In your own notes, choose one task and complete these four lines. This is enough to begin a useful conversation about automation.
- The task starts when…
- The information it needs is…
- A person should review…
- The useful result is…
Begin with one recurring task, a clear output and a person responsible for reviewing the result.