Automation Preflight: Decide to Automate — and Own the Outcome

Too often automation is celebrated as a time-saver until the first silent failure, runaway cost, or orphaned script forces late-night firefights. This episode presents an Automation Preflight: a short, repeatable cross-functional ritual that tests whether automation is the right next step and makes post-deployment responsibility explicit. Mirko contrasts the business appetite for efficiency (expectations, SLAs, downstream promises) with IT’s operational reality (monitoring, drift, maintenance), then reads a compact, copy‑paste Preflight checklist on-air: rationale, success signal, scale assumptions, owner & support window, rollback/fallback, cost guardrail, and a 7‑day observation rule. Listeners get three low-friction rituals to try this week (preflight read, 7‑day watch, lightweight ownership tag), a measurable 7‑day pilot plan, and concrete signs automation should be paused or reverted. Closing asks listeners to run the preflight on one candidate automation, measure one outcome, and—if useful—leave a review.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-it-it-business--6867401/support.To continue the conversation, follow Mirko Peters on LinkedIn, where more insights and real-world examples are shared from both business and IT perspectives.