The Week Six Checklist

Most automations feel done at week two. The real test is week six, when the person who built it has moved on. Run this checklist to find out whether your system can stand on its own.

How to use this: Go through the twelve checks for one automation you already run or are about to launch. Check the boxes you can honestly say are true today. An empty box is not a failure. It is a to-do before the builder walks away. Print it and keep it with the system’s documentation.

Ready to run without its builder

0 of 12

01 Logging Every run leaves a record. You can see what happened, when, and with what result, without asking the person who built it. 02 Failure alerts When something breaks, a named person gets told automatically. Silence is never the only signal that it failed. 03 Credential ownership The logins, keys, and tokens live in accounts your business controls, not in the builder’s personal accounts. 04 Test data There is a safe set of sample inputs you can run through it to check the system still works after a change. 05 Human approval points Anywhere a person should still weigh in, the system stops and waits for a yes. Those points are written down. 06 Recovery or rollback If a run goes wrong, there is a known way to undo it or recover, and someone has actually done it once. 07 Plain-English documentation A short doc explains what the system does, what feeds it, and what to do when it breaks. Written for your team, not for engineers. 08 Named business owner One person owns the business result. They decide whether it keeps running and what it is worth. 09 Named technical owner One person can open it up, read the logs, and fix or escalate a failure. Their name is in the doc. 10 Maintenance schedule There is a set time to check the system, review its logs, and confirm it is still doing its job. 11 Two-week unattended test The system has run for two weeks with no one stepping in. Nothing is “done” until it clears this. 12 Final handoff A handoff session happened. Your team watched it run, asked questions, and left able to operate it alone.

How to read your result

Twelve checks means the system is ready to run without you. It has an owner, a way to fail loudly, a way to recover, and a doc your team can follow. Fewer than twelve is not a verdict on the build. It is a punch list. Close the open boxes before you call it finished.

The two boxes people skip most are the named owners and the two-week unattended test. Skip them and you have not built an automation. You have built a dependency on the person who made it.

Who owns it after week six?

Some teams have a person who can own the maintenance schedule and take the alerts. Some do not. That gap is what the Care Plan covers. We monitor the systems we built, fix breakage fast, and keep the boxes above checked as your business changes. It is optional, and plenty of clients run everything in-house instead.

See how the Care Plan works →

The Week Six Checklist

How to read your result

Who owns it after week six?

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