Stacking The Automation Deck

Arranging the playing cards in a deck to be in one’s favor is called stacking the deck. Outside of card playing, we use the term more generally to mean arranging a situation to increase our chances of a favorable outcome. When it comes to automation endeavors, the meaning is no different. Specifically, we want to arrange our architecture, implementation, and usage patterns to be appropriate for our endeavor’s desired life-span. One approach to future-proofing is to focus less on the automation framework and more on the automation stack. An automation stack is a layered automation architecture where each layer builds upon the previous one and provides an audience-appropriate interface to the lower levels’ capabilities. This layered approach helps extend an implementation’s longevity by increasing the portability of the implementation across frameworks and across tools. Join Paul Grizzaffi as he walks through how layers can be a valuable part of an automation implementation, some caveats that should be considered when layering an architecture, and several examples of layered architectures of which he’s been a part. Come and learn ways to stack the deck in YOUR favor.