Guide 03 · Step 3 of 5

Choose the first workflow

The best first automation is not the biggest one. It is the one that can fail safely.

Independent guidance from Synergy. ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 22301 are published by ISO/IEC, which has no affiliation with Synergy and has not reviewed this material. Always work from the published text of the standard.

You now have a runbook and a baseline. The temptation is to pick the process with the largest number. That is usually the wrong first choice, because the largest process is also the one with the most exceptions and the least tolerance for error.

The selection test

Score each candidate on four things, and pick the one that scores well on all four rather than brilliantly on one:

• Frequency — daily beats monthly. Frequent work generates feedback fast, and feedback is how you find out whether it works.
• Rule density — mostly rules with a few exceptions beats mostly judgement.
• Blast radius — if it fails silently, who notices and how badly? An internal draft that a human reviews is safe. A customer invoice is not.
• Reversibility — can a wrong output be caught and undone before it leaves the building?

Define done, before you build

Write the acceptance criteria in the same document as the baseline: what accuracy is good enough, on what sample, reviewed by whom, and what happens when it is below that. An automation without a stated accuracy threshold cannot be judged a success or a failure — only an opinion.