The pattern I keep seeing
A client comes in saying “we need to automate X”. I ask “what is broken about the current way?” and they say “it is slow and manual.”
Within 30 minutes of discovery, we usually find that X should not exist at all in its current form. The process has accumulated layers of workarounds, exceptions, and stale assumptions. Automating it would lock in the dysfunction.
What BA-first means in practice
Before any automation work, I run a three-step diagnostic:
- Map the actual process - not the documented one, but what people really do
- Find the divergence - where workarounds quietly replaced the official path
- Decide what to keep - automate only what survives this scrutiny
This is mock content. Replace with real material.
See also: n8n-vs-make-vs-zapier for tool selection notes.