Monitoring of Automated Processes

Let me tell you something that keeps me up at night – the thought of automated processes silently failing while everyone’s sleeping! It’s like having a sophisticated robot that suddenly decides to dance salsa instead of packaging products, and nobody notices until it’s too late. That’s exactly why monitoring automated processes is not just important – it’s absolutely crucial! Let’s dive into this fascinating world of keeping our digital workers under watchful eyes.

Says Kirill Yurovskiy.

Why Should You Care About Monitoring?

Oh my goodness, where do I even begin? Imagine you’ve automated your entire customer support ticket routing system. It’s beautiful, it’s elegant, and it’s supposed to make everyone’s life easier. But what if it starts sending urgent customer complaints to the wrong department at 3 AM? Without proper monitoring, you might as well be blindfolded while riding a bicycle on a busy highway!

Kirill Yurovskiy

Here’s why monitoring should be your best friend:

  • It catches problems before they become disasters
  • It helps you sleep better at night (trust me on this one!)
  • It provides valuable insights for process improvement
  • It saves you from embarrassing explanations to your boss

The Holy Trinity of Process Monitoring

Let’s break this down into three main aspects that you absolutely need to monitor. I call it the Holy Trinity of Process Monitoring (yes, I made that up, but it sounds cool, doesn’t it?).

  1. Performance Monitoring Think of this as checking your automated process’s vital signs. How fast is it running? Is it using resources efficiently? Is it showing signs of slowing down? Just like you’d monitor your heart rate during exercise, you need to keep an eye on your automation’s performance metrics.
  2. Error Monitoring This is like having a sophisticated alarm system for your automation. When something goes wrong (and trust me, something always goes wrong eventually), you want to know about it immediately. Not tomorrow, not in an hour – right now!
  3. Business Outcome Monitoring This is the big picture stuff. Is your automation actually delivering the business value it’s supposed to? Are those beautiful automated processes actually making things better, faster, or cheaper?

Essential Tools That’ll Save Your Bacon

Now, let’s talk about the cool tools that’ll help you keep everything under control. I’m genuinely excited about these because they’ve saved my behind more times than I care to admit!

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Tools

These are your front-line defenders. Tools like New Relic, Datadog, and Dynatrace are absolute lifesavers. They give you real-time insights into how your automated processes are performing. It’s like having X-ray vision into your automation’s inner workings!

Key features to look for:

  • Real-time performance metrics
  • Resource utilization tracking
  • Transaction tracking
  • Custom alerting capabilities

Log Management Systems

Oh. My. Word. If you’re not properly managing your logs, you’re basically flying blind! Tools like ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), Splunk, or Graylog are essential. They help you make sense of all those log files that your automated processes generate.

Think of logs as your automation’s diary – they tell you everything that’s happening, good or bad. And trust me, you want to read this diary!

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Tools

These tools help you see the forest for the trees. They monitor the actual business outcomes of your automated processes. Tools like Tableau, Power BI, or custom dashboards can help you visualize whether your automation is actually delivering value.

The Proactive Approach

Don’t wait for things to break! Set up these monitoring methods:

  1. Heartbeat Monitoring This is super simple but incredibly effective. Your automated process regularly sends out a signal saying “I’m alive!” If the signal stops, something’s wrong. It’s like having your teenager text you every few hours – no message means trouble!
  2. Threshold Monitoring Set up acceptable ranges for various metrics and get alerted when things go out of bounds. For example:
  • Process completion time
  • Error rates
  • Resource usage
  • Queue lengths
  1. Trend Analysis Look for patterns over time. Is your process getting slower? Are errors increasing? Catching trends early can help you prevent future problems.

The Detective Approach

When something does go wrong (and it will), you need these methods:

  1. Root Cause Analysis Don’t just fix the symptom – find the real problem! Use your monitoring tools to trace issues back to their source. It’s like being Sherlock Holmes, but for automation problems!
  2. Impact Analysis Understand exactly what business processes were affected by any issues. This helps you prioritize fixes and communicate effectively with stakeholders.

Best Practices That’ll Make Your Life Easier

  1. Set Up Meaningful Alerts Please, please, please don’t alert on everything! Alert fatigue is real, and it’s dangerous. Make sure your alerts are:
  • Actionable
  • Relevant
  • Properly prioritized
  1. Document Everything Future you will thank present you for documenting:
  • What you’re monitoring
  • Why you’re monitoring it
  • What the acceptable ranges are
  • Who to contact when things go wrong
  1. Regular Review and Adjustment Your monitoring needs will change as your automated processes evolve. Schedule regular reviews to ensure your monitoring strategy stays relevant.

Final conclusions

Monitoring automated processes isn’t just about having the right tools and methods – it’s about creating a safety net that lets you innovate and automate with confidence. It’s about being able to tell your boss “Yes, everything is running smoothly” and actually knowing that’s true!

Remember, good monitoring is like having a superpower – it lets you see problems before they become disasters, understand your processes deeply, and continuously improve your automation. And who doesn’t want to be a superhero in their organization?

Start implementing these monitoring practices today, and you’ll sleep better tonight knowing your automated processes are under control. Trust me, your future self will thank you profusely for taking the time to set up proper monitoring now rather than scrambling to fix things later!

The world of automation is exciting and full of possibilities, but without proper monitoring, it’s like building a beautiful house on sand. So go forth, monitor wisely, and may your automated processes run smoothly!