Ops teams often find themselves dealing with manual procedures that are time-consuming and repetitive, such as modifying infrastructure or provisioning user accounts. These procedures can become overwhelming with multiple steps, branches, and special cases to track. The frustration of these manual slogs can be alleviated through do-nothing scripting, where each step is encapsulated in a function and presented to the user one at a time for manual completion. While this script doesn’t automate the tasks, it helps maintain focus, prevents skipping steps, and lays the groundwork for future automation efforts. This approach reduces the activation energy for automating tasks and ultimately eliminates toil over time.
https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing-scripting-the-key-to-gradual-automation/