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Automation Week: how we built time back into our workday
A repetitive task that takes just a bit too much time. A manual check that's actually unnecessary. A late-night alert that wakes you up when it could resolve itself. We all know these things eat into our day. The challenge? Finding time to actually fix them when there's always other work to do.
Enter Automation Week
We flipped the script: instead of fitting automation around other work, we made it the focus. Five days where engineers got the space to automate small, daily improvements they chose themselves. The only criterion: it should make our daily work easier or more enjoyable.
Sascha Bauer, Manager Customer Operations: “Automation Week felt like a shared journey of discovery. We started with an idea and ended with tangible results – not through long meetings, but by building together. In short, intensive blocks, we learned how automation makes our work smarter and faster while gaining new knowledge and strengthening each other.”
From idea to production in a week
The week kicked off with a sprint planning session. Engineers worked in two-hour blocks, with colleagues available to help with setup and analysis.
Some highlights:
- Managing Windows via AWX, eliminating manual interventions
- Automatically restarting services without engineer involvement
- A persistent Kubernetes error traced back to a simple version mismatch within minutes
That last one came from one of our new AI tools. More on that in a moment.
Internal AI tooling: safe and practical
Alongside the automation projects, we launched two internal AI tools. Important detail: both run entirely locally and are only accessible via VPN. This means engineers can work with them safely, even with sensitive customer or system data.
- Our AI chat provides quick explanations, code samples, reviews, and helps structure complex questions.
- Our AI assistant can conduct independent research on servers via Teleport. The tool doesn't make any changes but offers smart suggestions and mainly accelerates the analysis phase.
Several engineers used these tools during the week, with very positive feedback. The more we use them, the more routine work we can automate and the more time we have for more challenging tasks.
Why this matters beyond our team
When our engineers spend less time on routine maintenance and manual interventions, they have more capacity for what really matters: solving complex challenges for our clients. Faster incident analysis means quicker resolutions. Fewer false alerts mean we can focus on real issues. And the expertise we build through internal automation directly benefits the infrastructure we manage for our clients.
Building on momentum
Not all demos fit in the first session, so there was a follow-up featuring automated server rollouts. Several automations went into production shortly after, especially those that reduce unnecessary alerts, particularly at night.
Automation Week wasn't a one-off event. It's the start of a new way of working where we continuously look for small improvements with big impact.
