We spend a lot of time automating software delivery processes. For someone who spends a lot of time removing humans from repetitive, mundane and error-prone processes, I spend a lot of time talking with people. In particular, my time is spent in helping others understand that automation will make their jobs easier and that software/systems professionals should be focusing on novel activities, not doing the same thing over and over again and calling it work. However, inevitably, I've heard a similar question numerous times:
The obvious implication is that automation leads to less communication. I cannot disagree more with this. In fact, I've found it leads to much more effective communication. Prior to designing and implementing software delivery automation systems for our customers, we typically find that organizations have instituted "walls" between teams (such as between development, QA and Systems/Operations) and no one is communicating with each other. They might be "talking", but they are not effectively communicating. Most of their conversations center around things like "but, I thought you were supposed to do that?" or "I forgot to copy the file to that location" or "will you provide me the authentication information for XYZ host?" If this is the kind of communication people envision in their theoretical "non-automated world", I'd rather talk about the latest dumb show on TV.
The reason we find that organizations communicate better after we automate their software delivery processes is because the automation becomes part of the overall software delivery system. For instance, when the developer checks a build/deployment script change into the version-control repository, it is used by QA and the Systems/Operations teams and vice-versa. No longer can team members get away with the "throw-it-over-the-wall" approach and abdicate their responsibility. Moreover, because it's all tied into CI and build management servers, they get instant notification when something does go wrong so that the fix is usually minor and made quickly. As I often like to say "Automation is for the People".
