Automation Trumps Tools

It's true that tools can make a difficult task faster, easier, and more accurate, but the point of automation is to make your life even easier by eliminating most of the manual intervention needed for a task.  That's the opinion of Tom Limoncelli, the Everyday Sysadmin, in his most recent post:

While I encourage the creation of tools to make sysadmins tasks easier, the creation of systems that eliminate tasks is much more important. While automating our tasks often involves creating tools, writing tools does not automate our work.

There's a difference.  -- Tom Limoncelli

There can be conflicts sometimes between the admins who are used to using tools and not automation.  If they keep using their old process, they will confuse the automation.  It's important to keep sysadmins informed about changes to the automation if they're not making them on their own.  Check out Tom's full post for further detail and insight.

Source: http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/11/tools-vs-automation.html