Template & Guide

RPA & Workflow Automation Template with Governance Guardrails

An interactive use-case assessment and governance checklist to scope, secure, test, monitor, and decide whether to scale, retire, or rework automations. Collects practical details about frequency, ROI, exceptions, data sensitivity, security controls, change-control needs, monitoring plans, and retire/scale criteria so teams can create maintainable, observable, and safe automations.

Interactive Tool

RPA & Workflow Automation Assessment and Governance

Purpose

This interactive template helps teams decide which routine work to automate and how to guard automations so they remain reliable, secure, observable, and easy to maintain. Use it to capture the use-case, estimate savings and risk, confirm security and change-control steps, specify monitoring and exception handling, and record retire/scale criteria.

Complete the fields below to save a repeatable assessment that can guide development, deployment, and long-term ownership.

Give the automation a short, clear name (e.g., 'Invoice PDF extraction to ERP').
Describe what the automation will do and the business purpose.
How often the automation will run on average each week.
Average operator minutes saved each time the automation runs.
Calculated or estimated total hours saved per week. (You may enter an estimate.)
Qualitative or quantitative ROI estimate and assumptions (costs, savings, FTE impact).
How many exceptions or manual interventions do you expect on average per run?
If known, estimated percent of runs that will generate exceptions.
High-level flow: inputs, steps, outputs, and systems involved. Attach or paste diagram text here.
List the core steps the automation will perform. This helps identify brittle points and exception triggers.
Which systems, databases, or downstream teams will be impacted by this automation?
Identify the sensitivity of the data the automation will access or move.
Yes = requires stronger controls such as vaulting credentials and encryption.
If yes, ensure credentials are stored in an approved secrets manager and use least-privilege access.
Select controls that are implemented or planned for this automation.
Select items that are completed or scheduled prior to production deployment.
Will changes require approval from Change Advisory Board, Release Management, or equivalent?
Describe required approvals, testing gates, and rollback triggers.
Includes test data, acceptance criteria, and who will approve tests.
How often will the automation be observed or checks run?
Where will alerts be sent if the automation fails or exceeds thresholds?
Define key metrics to monitor (success rate, duration, queue length), thresholds, and the step-by-step exception playbook.
Person responsible for monitoring, incidents, and lifecycle decisions.
Contact for alerts and governance questions.
What automated retry logic is appropriate before raising an alert?
Describe exactly what to do when common exceptions occur, including who to notify, how to reprocess, and how to fix root causes.
List measurable conditions that justify scaling (e.g., sustained success rate > 99.5%, ROI threshold, low maintenance burden).
Conditions under which the automation should be retired or replaced (e.g., target system sunset, maintenance cost > benefit, high exception rates).
Any other risks (operational, legal, vendor) and planned mitigations.
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