Document Assembly Automation Trade-Offs

• Moving up the maturity curve raises upfront setup effort, but it tends to reduce the day-to-day work required to keep the automation running.
• The one-off macro is easiest to get moving and keeps failures relatively local, but it carries the heaviest maintenance burden.
• The polished tool creates the lowest maintenance burden, yet it also concentrates more setup effort and the widest failure impact into a single experience.
• The scripted batch pipeline is the middle option: it does not win any single burden dimension, but it avoids the sharpest extremes.

All three source metrics are burden scores, so lower values are better. Shorter bars, lower bubbles, and smaller scenario scores indicate the lighter operational cost or lower risk footprint.

The scenario chart applies different decision rules to the same underlying scores: launch speed favors low setup effort, low-touch operations favors low maintenance, risk containment favors a smaller blast radius, and predictability adds a penalty for uneven trade-offs.

This means the dashboard shows both the raw burden numbers and the decision context in which each automation style is most attractive.