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Card 9 of 15 The guiding principles ●●○ Working knowledge

Optimise and automate — in that order

Optimise and automate is a sequence, not a pair. Make the work effective first, remove what does not contribute, and only then automate what remains. Automating an unoptimised process makes a bad outcome arrive faster.

Why it is like this

Automation freezes a process in code. Doing it before optimisation means paying to preserve the waste, and paying again to remove it later.

Not to be confused with

A recommendation to automate. The principle is as much a brake: it also says to involve people in the optimisation, because the people doing the work know where the waste is.

In practice

Automating a seven-step approval chain gives you an instant seven-step approval chain. Removing four of the steps first is the whole of the gain.

Source: ITIL 4 Foundation (AXELOS / PeopleCert), 2019 edition — §4.3.7. Read on .

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Predict Check yourself

A team scripts a manual approval workflow end to end without changing it. What does ITIL 4 say they have most likely achieved?

  1. A faster version of an unoptimised process — the principle puts optimisation first precisely to prevent this.
  2. Full compliance with optimise and automate, since the work is now automated.
  3. An improvement, because automation reduces human error.
  4. Nothing measurable, since automation is outside the guiding principles.
Show the answer

A faster version of an unoptimised process — the principle puts optimisation first precisely to prevent this.

Speed is not the measure; the steps that should not exist are still there, and now they are harder to remove.