The primary goal of automating processes within platform teams is to eliminate toil—the manual, repetitive, and automatable work that consumes engineers' time. By automating tasks such as infrastructure provisioning, application deployment, and system monitoring, teams reduce the time spent on mundane activities. This allows engineers to focus on higher-value work, such as improving system architecture, enhancing platform capabilities, and developing new features that increase reliability and efficiency. Automation directly translates to increased productivity and reduced potential for human error in critical operations.

B. Focusing on manual processes is the antithesis of automation; the goal is to minimize or eliminate them.

C. While automation can lead to more tasks being completed, this is a secondary outcome, not the primary goal, which is efficiency and reliability.

D. Automation can enforce coding standards (e.g., via CI pipelines), but this is a specific application, not the overarching goal of process automation.

1. Beyer

B.

Jones

C.

Petoff

J.

& Murphy

N. R. (2016). Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems. O'Reilly Media. In Chapter 5

"Eliminating Toil

" the authors state

"The SRE organization has an overriding mission to keep the Google production environment running and available... A primary driver of this mission is to eliminate 'toil'." Toil is explicitly defined as manual

repetitive

and automatable work.

2. Fox

A.

& Patterson

D. (2016). Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing. Strawberry Canyon LLC. In Chapter 8

Section 8.3

"Continuous Deployment

" the text emphasizes that automation is critical for replacing error-prone manual deployment steps

stating

"The goal is to make releasing new code so routine and low-risk that it can be done by anyone at any time." This highlights the goal of reducing repetitive manual effort.

3. Humble

J.

& Farley

D. (2010). Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build

Test

and Deployment Automation. Addison-Wesley Professional. In Chapter 1

"The Problem of Delivering Software

" the authors argue that a fundamental goal of automation is to make processes repeatable and reliable

stating

"The cornerstone of a rapid

reliable

low-risk delivery process is automation... By automating it

we make the process repeatable and reliable." This directly supports the reduction of repetitive manual tasks.