Processes drive business success, define the brand, and determine the bottom line. The innovative organization embraces ongoing change, recognizing that no single process improvement project will fix a process for all time. Rather, an organization must continuously improve its processes to meet competitive challenges. This whitepaper outlines a pragmatic, agile approach to continuous process improvement: start simple and build incrementally. To learn more, read my free whitepaper.
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Jim Downey 
Hi James, nice whitepaper. Your agile approach outlines important tips to guide companies toward their business goals. I understand why you say exercise caution with automation, since automation is not meant for every process. However, I think that deployment automation is a process that fits well in an agile environment. Deployment automation allows operations teams to keep up with the more frequent deliverables agile allows development teams to produce. Would you suggest automating deployments when using agile methods?
Thanks for the comment. I’m not opposed to automation. In fact, I’m a computer programmer so developing automation is much of the work that I do for clients. Yes, automation often makes sense. The trick is to make sure that you have first mastered the process, and only then figure out where automation makes sense. And introduce automation in iterative steps making sure not to tackle too much at once.
Agreed – understanding the process is an important element of automation. We see a big advantage in how automation helps bridge the gap between development and operations teams – saving a lot of time and money. Introducing automation in steps, as you say, is helpful for companies to fully understand and appreciate the benefits in one area before spreading it across the entire organization. Looking forward to reading more from you on this!