01 / Understand
I understand the workflow before I automate it.
Repetition is easy to spot. The harder part is finding out why it exists: where information comes from, which checks matter, where people wait, and what still needs human judgment.
I map that path before writing the automation. A faster script is not much help if the underlying process is still difficult to understand.
02 / Build
The happy path is only the beginning.
Real tools have to deal with changing configuration, unavailable services, partial results, and inputs nobody expected.
I build logging, validation, tests, and useful errors into the workflow from the start, so the person running it can see what happened and decide what to do next.
03 / Handoff
The system should make sense without me.
Automation becomes useful when another engineer can run it, diagnose it, and change it without relying on the person who wrote the first version.
That means reproducible environments, documentation, delivery pipelines, and enough context for the next person to take responsibility for the work.