Choosing the tasks to automate
Sort the candidates by frequency, verifiability, reversibility and available material.
ObjectiveBy the end of this lesson, you will be able to sort candidate tasks by frequency, verifiability, reversibility and material, then choose between an assistant, a scheduled task and a watch.
Your task map probably holds more candidates than you can handle. You have to choose. A good first assistant is useful every week, easy to check and has no serious consequence when it gets something wrong. The ambitious cases will come once the team trusts it.
Four questions to sort
- Frequency: does the task come up often enough to justify the effort?
- Verifiability: can a person judge the result in under a minute?
- Reversibility: is an error easy to put right?
- Material: does the information needed exist in writing?
A task that ticks all four boxes is an excellent first candidate. Preparing the weekly summary of incoming requests is a good example. Replying to an unhappy customer, on the other hand, is frequent but hard to reverse. It is better served by an assistant that proposes a draft, which a person reviews and approves.
Assistant, scheduled task or watch
- An assistant answers when asked, within a fixed frame: instructions, knowledge, tools.
- A scheduled task runs on its own, at the chosen time, and produces a result.
- A watch monitors a page, a topic or a source, and only speaks up if something changes.
- Open the “Activity analysis” project.
- Attach the task map validated by the team to a new conversation.
- Send the ranking request.
- Discuss the result in a meeting and keep a single candidate to start with.
- Write the chosen candidate and the reason for the choice in the project description.