Automation multiplies a process. If the process is unclear, you automate confusion. Map the trigger, decision, owner and exception path first.
Good automation candidates have a clear trigger and predictable outcome: sending a receipt after payment, notifying a manager when stock falls below a threshold, creating a follow-up task after a lead is added, or generating a daily report from structured data.
Tasks that require substantial judgment may benefit more from better information than full automation.
Every automation needs to answer what happens when an API is down, data is missing, a duplicate event arrives or a person needs to override the outcome. The happy path is usually easy; reliability lives in exception handling.
Design idempotency and retries before production. An automation that sends three invoices because a webhook retried is not useful automation.
Estimate time saved, errors reduced, response time improved or revenue protected. This creates a basis for deciding whether the automation is worth maintaining. TWE includes an Automation ROI calculator for that initial estimate, but the final decision should still consider risk and operational complexity.