Our team uses two methods to help with manual but not yet automated tasks.
1) Slack Workflow - used to remind us for recurring but not "have to do right away" tasks. Each of us adds a reaction when they complete the task
2) Recurring calendar invite - for important "must do" tasks where we invite the whole team. The 'owner' will accept the meeting
Being a small team means we each look out of each other, so we kindly remind each other when things could slip through the cracks.
For recurring and future tasks that are not automated and is not tracked by any other process I have a page in Confluence Cloud. It contains a table where one column has the due date and the other column a short description of the task. Then I have a weekly reminder that reminds me to look at this page.
If it’s time to do the task but it’s so big that I cannot do it directly I will create a Jira ticket for it.
When the task is done I either remove it from the list, or bump the due date if it’s a recurring task.
From my point of view the power of automation for recurring tasks is less to do with time saved, and more to do with making sure that it will get done and be done the same way every time.
Bonus tip: log the outputs of automated tasks when they run, but only send out notifications of errors - that way you don't train staff to ignore the notifications from the task just because they see it every time the job runs, and instead seeing a notification from it is rare, so they know they need to investigate.
Strongly agree. Automation is the ideal outcome whenever possible.
What I keep running into is the gray area between "can’t be automated yet" and "shouldn’t be automated". Things like reviews, checks, approvals, or manual verifications.
The notification fatigue point is especially real. If everything notifies, nothing gets attention.
Do you usually treat non-automatable tasks as exceptions, or do you still rely on routines / trust for those?
If your team is small, it must be people who are organized and trustworthy enough that you don't need to micro-manage them and track their work. If you find things are slipping through the cracks, you don't have the correct small team. The key hiring focus when you are that small is: "Is this person good enough that I can simply tell them to get it done and it will happen, so I can go work on other things?"
This might sound crazy, but cronjobs which send emails!
A simple email reminder will suffice for most things. Assuming you have good employees, they just need gently prodding. :)
Our team uses two methods to help with manual but not yet automated tasks.
1) Slack Workflow - used to remind us for recurring but not "have to do right away" tasks. Each of us adds a reaction when they complete the task 2) Recurring calendar invite - for important "must do" tasks where we invite the whole team. The 'owner' will accept the meeting
Being a small team means we each look out of each other, so we kindly remind each other when things could slip through the cracks.
For recurring and future tasks that are not automated and is not tracked by any other process I have a page in Confluence Cloud. It contains a table where one column has the due date and the other column a short description of the task. Then I have a weekly reminder that reminds me to look at this page.
If it’s time to do the task but it’s so big that I cannot do it directly I will create a Jira ticket for it.
When the task is done I either remove it from the list, or bump the due date if it’s a recurring task.
We used to track and plan this ahead in a shared weekly schedule, together with feature work and assignments.
Any good (agile) collaboration system supports this. We did this succesfully in Azure DevOps and GitLab, for example.
Where possible automate them!
From my point of view the power of automation for recurring tasks is less to do with time saved, and more to do with making sure that it will get done and be done the same way every time.
Bonus tip: log the outputs of automated tasks when they run, but only send out notifications of errors - that way you don't train staff to ignore the notifications from the task just because they see it every time the job runs, and instead seeing a notification from it is rare, so they know they need to investigate.
Strongly agree. Automation is the ideal outcome whenever possible.
What I keep running into is the gray area between "can’t be automated yet" and "shouldn’t be automated". Things like reviews, checks, approvals, or manual verifications.
The notification fatigue point is especially real. If everything notifies, nothing gets attention.
Do you usually treat non-automatable tasks as exceptions, or do you still rely on routines / trust for those?
If your team is small, it must be people who are organized and trustworthy enough that you don't need to micro-manage them and track their work. If you find things are slipping through the cracks, you don't have the correct small team. The key hiring focus when you are that small is: "Is this person good enough that I can simply tell them to get it done and it will happen, so I can go work on other things?"
I agree this works well for one-off or high-signal tasks.
Where I’ve personally seen friction is with recurring, low-visibility work.
Things people fully intend to do, but that don’t produce immediate feedback.