4 ways to prepare teams to be an automation-first organization
Becoming an automation-first organization can be accelerated by starting with people. While technology and process are integral parts of any transformation, a strategy to manage organizational culture change can move you toward your business goals faster. Here are four ways to help accelerate your automation efforts.
1 Identify cost benefits early
Sharing early successes is critical to broader, standardized automation and orchestration efforts. Finding the right, first use case to automate is an important step. Some of the most visible workflows may also be some of the most complicated, and may not be an ideal example of early success.
But the process can be made easier by identifying the costs of the more manual tasks or workflows you want to automate, then selecting one that has a complexity you can tackle, while also having a clear business value in automating (try our calculator). By determining the cost before you start automating, you can more easily calculate your return on investment (ROI) and show faster time to value that will give you the basis for persuasive, data-driven conversations with other departments later. Having the ROI of automation initiatives in hand can help unite teams faster by strengthening the case for broader enterprise automation, while also helping you showcase your own success.
2 Make it personal
Change can create anxiety in employees, especially if they feel their job security is threatened by a new process. But training your current team is faster than replacing via hiring or through long-term outsourcing. At the same time, your staff may not see the upside of these new, unfamiliar skills, or worry about exposing their own knowledge gaps. Proper training can make teams feel included in the change and prepare them for success.
Frame the change as directly benefiting the team. Show systems operators how new skills increase their effectiveness as they become infrastructure developers. Show mid-level managers the business value of agile processes that increase effectiveness, flexibility, and visibility while reducing the need for constant, rigid oversight. This approach can help allay fear of change, and make your employees feel empowered by the opportunity rather than threatened by it.
