Redesign the job, not the current version

The operative instruction that follows from Mechanization produces a different product.

Mechanization demands an equivalent product, not an identical one. The real work of conversion is the imaginative redesign of that equivalent: extract the essentials of the job, then design the mechanization to do that. Trying to keep everything in detail exactly as it was is what makes large mechanization efforts fail.

The familiar software adage, “don’t automate the manual process”, is the weak form. Hamming’s version is stronger: the automated artifact will be categorically different whether or not you plan for it. Planning is the only choice available.

Caveat before applying it: Equivalent product hides a choice of metric

Source: The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn