Resources · Tool
The Automation Ownership Map
An automation with no owner is a future outage waiting for a bad day. This worksheet puts a name next to every job a running system needs, so nothing falls through the gap after launch.
How to use this: Pick one automation. Write a real person’s name in each row, plus a backup where you can. If a row has no name, that job has no owner yet. Fill it before you go live. Print it and keep it with the system’s documentation.
Two kinds of ownership
Owning the business result is not the same as maintaining the technical system, and one person rarely does both well. The business owner decides whether the automation is worth running and answers for what it produces. The technical owner keeps it alive, reads the logs, and fixes what breaks. Name both. When they are the same person, write the name twice on purpose, so everyone knows the whole thing rests on one set of shoulders.
The rows people leave blank
Escalation path and failure-alert recipient are the two that get skipped, and they are the two you need most on the day something breaks. If the answer to “who gets the alert” is “nobody, we notice when a customer complains,” the map is not done.
Next: is the system actually ready?
A filled-in map is half the handoff. The Week Six Checklist covers the other half: logging, alerts, recovery, and the two-week unattended test that proves it can run without its builder.
Open the Week Six Checklist →