A manual process has stopped scaling

A task done by hand, such as checking each report or updating a catalogue, worked at launch and now takes longer than the time available.

The work is still done carefully. It arrives late.

• One person becomes the bottleneck, and holidays show it.
• The person doing the task applies rules nobody has written down.
• Volume grew slowly, and no single week prompted a change.
• Automation is discussed and never scoped.
• Import with validation replaces retyping.

Unwritten decisions. The person doing the task applies rules nobody has written down, so the task cannot be handed over or automated.

• One person is the bottleneck, and holidays show it
• A periodic update takes weeks
• The backlog grows between cycles
• Quality depends on who did the work
• Automation is discussed and never scoped

What helps:

• Observe the manual task and write down its decisions
• Automate the common cases and route exceptions to a person
• Bulk editing with preview for what remains
• Import with validation in place of retyping

The tension: automating common cases frees time and leaves people with the hardest ones, where each item takes longer and errors concentrate.

Writing down the decisions takes time from the one person who knows them, at the moment they have the least time.

• Scoping automation before the decisions are written down
• Hiring a second person to repeat the same undocumented task
• Automating everything and leaving no path for exceptions
• Measuring the task by items processed and ignoring the delay