2025-02-12 · Hana Morita

Naming Automation Tasks So Colleagues Actually Reuse Them

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Most automation debt starts with filenames like final2.py. We ask cohorts to adopt a verb-first habit—verbs that describe the outcome, not the mechanism. A merge_reports job reads clearer than script_new. In Kyoto evening cohorts we pair naming with a one-line README stub generated from a template. That stub lists inputs, outputs, and the owner Slack handle. It is not glamorous work, but it prevents the silent fork where three people maintain three variants of the same CSV cleanup. When you document assumptions, call out timezone and encoding explicitly. Japan-based teams routinely hit Shift_JIS edge cases; stating UTF-8 expectations in the header saves a support thread. Finally, link to the monitoring dashboard or log query if one exists—future you is also a colleague.

Tags: documentation, cli, teams