Perform a manual task more than two times only if necessary
Technology enables amazing things to happen in the workplace, saving time and bringing efficiency to areas that used to be time sinks. With the advent of more open environments (public APIs, modules, web hooks, complete and through documentation, open source projects) the ability to automate processes has gone from being a pipe dream to a force multiplier. It’s now possible to automate infrastructure allowing not only servers to be created, but also validate and correct the configuration of these servers. These configurations are peer reviewed, documented standard which are maintained in a version control system. Getting to this step and making this part of the philosophy a reality requires that the other items in the list are either a work in progress or have already been tackled. This is the end goal of everything else – to allow for a seamless, documented, reliable and repeatable process allowing for the automation of documented manual processes.