In 2015, senior software engineer Benjamin Willenbring was excited when his employer, Autodesk, introduced automated software testing. That excitement didn’t last long. The small automation team didn’t communicate much with his division. And when the tests reached production, they weren’t what anyone hoped for.
“My teammates were talking about tests failing non-deterministically, and not really having a lot of confidence in the test,” Willenbring says. He found that “to get to actually run the test was very, very difficult. It wasn’t documented. You had to talk to someone. And there were an enormous amount of files and I didn’t really understand why.”[ Learn the 8 keys to a successful RPA implementation and why RPA implementations fail. | Find out why RPA is poised for a big business breakout and get all your RPA questions answers with our robotic process automation explainer. | Get the latest insights by signing up for our CIO daily newsletter. ]
Automation was supposed to make Willenbring’s work easier. Instead, the problems it created came to dominate much of his energy for the next several years.
Willenbring’s experience isn’t uncommon. And with automation rapidly spreading through IT, cautionary tales provide valuable lessons.
From the automated workflows of DevOps to robotic process automation (RPA), automated processes aim to reduce scut work and free skilled employees for higher-level tasks. But flawed premises or botched rollouts can turn the dream of automation into a nightmare. We spoke to several IT pros about automation horror stories they’ve heard about or endured, and distilled out six commandments to help your automation initiatives avoid such fates.
