Take our maturity quiz today and see where your automation maturity stacks up!

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Let’s call a spade a spade: Automation isn’t just a “nice to have” anymore.

Automation is business-critical for speed, scalability, and resilience. It’s a mechanism of survival in today’s hyper-modern state of business. But the reality is that not every team is on the same page when it comes to automation.

Some departments are stuck in manual mode, relying on tribal knowledge and overburdened experts. Others might have scripts in place but no real strategy. The result? Operational drag, missed SLAs, slow incident response, and rising costs.

The truth is, automation isn’t a switch you flip—it’s a journey. And the level of automation maturity your organization has reached directly impacts business performance.

The Cost of Immature Automation

When automation is underdeveloped or inconsistently applied, the impact on day-to-day operations is significant. Teams spend valuable time on repetitive tasks, rely on manual processes that slow down resolution, and struggle with fragmented tooling that lacks visibility and control. 

What starts as a few inefficient workflows can quickly snowball into broader operational issues—missed deadlines, growing ticket queues, and rising frustration across teams. Without a mature automation strategy, organizations end up reacting to problems instead of proactively preventing them.

Organizations run into all kinds of operational headaches, including:

• Manual toil and burnout: Teams waste time on repetitive tasks, leading to fatigue and slow resolution times.
• Dependency bottlenecks: Critical workflows depend on a handful of experts to execute scripts or troubleshoot issues.
• Visibility gaps: Without centralized control, it’s hard to know what’s automated, what isn’t, and where the biggest opportunities lie.
• Security and compliance risks: Lack of governance opens the door for inconsistencies and errors.
• Innovation gridlock: Time spent fighting fires is time not spent building the future.

These challenges compound as teams grow, systems become more complex, and customers expect faster, more reliable service.

Why Automation Maturity Matters

Automation maturity isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a strategic indicator of how well your organization is leveraging automation to drive meaningful business outcomes. As you move up the maturity curve, you shift from reactive, manual workflows to proactive, intelligent operations that scale. At the forefront of this evolution are AI agents—autonomous, goal-driven systems that can handle repetitive tasks, orchestrate complex response actions, and adapt in real time. 

By embedding AI agents into your operations, you not only accelerate resolution times and reduce manual toil, but also free up teams to focus on higher-value work. This level of automation maturity enables greater agility, operational efficiency, and a more resilient business overall. To learn more about PagerDuty’s AI agents, sign up for early access here.

In PagerDuty’s Automation Maturity Model, we outline five key stages:

1. Manual – Everything is done by hand. Automation is either nonexistent or limited to one-off scripts.
2. Siloed – Automation exists, but it’s trapped within teams or only accessible to experts.
3. Centralized – Automation is standardized and governed, with self-service access across the organization.
4. Standardized – A scalable framework emerges, balancing structure and flexibility.
5. Adaptive – Automation becomes intelligent, dynamic, and AI-driven, operating behind the scenes to prevent issues before they impact users.

As you progress through the maturity model, you unlock a host of operational and business benefits that stem from individual contributors up to executive-level business value:

• Reduced Costs & Manual Effort. With mature automation, teams spend less time on repetitive work and more time on innovation. That translates to lower operational costs and a higher return on talent.
• Faster Incident Resolution. Empowered teams can trigger automation on-demand, dramatically reducing Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and minimizing customer impact.
• Improved Governance & Control. A centralized Automation Center of Excellence ensures that automation follows best practices, stays secure, and aligns with business objectives.
• Scalability & Innovation. By reducing friction and enabling self-service, automation becomes a true force multiplier—helping organizations scale faster and adapt to change.
• AI-Driven Agility. At the highest level, automation isn’t just triggered by users—it’s driven by real-time events and augmented by AI to execute, recommend, and even design automated responses.

Unlock Your Full Automation Potential

Whether you’re just starting your automation journey or well on your way to AI-executed operations, understanding your current level of automation maturity is key to leveling up.

Find out what stage of maturity your organization is at by taking our maturity assessment. 

Once you’ve figured out which stage you’re at, take a look at the Automation Maturity ebook to learn more about your stage, what it means for your team, and what you can do to advance to the next stage of maturity. 

Want to skip the formalities? Talk to a specialist today.