Script === Shotgun: You may want to reconsider giving users automation capabilities

TL;DR Simply replace the word script with shotgun and you will arrive at the truth of the statement.

Part of the service we offer is advising large organisations on cloud operations and recently we had an issue where a customer had been throttled due to excessive use.

Cut a long story short a developer had been given access to the production systems and a platform that allowed them to run PowerShell. They had written a ‘small’ script that just retrieved metadata on all documents in a library. They tested it on a library with a couple of hundred documents and it finished in a few minutes.

They used it for a few days and everything was lovely. Until they pointed it at a 900,000 document library and it ran for days, and throttled us.

I talked to him and he said:

“I just used a script on a library”

Sounds innocuous enough doesn’t it, so just replace the word script with shotgun

“I just used a shotgun on a library”

That gives a better indication of the reality of the potential for damage.

Shotguns are very useful, for example for dealing with crows, but you have to be very careful who you give them to and what they use them on.

FI;CR (Finished It; Can’t Remember)

A user without scripting is limited by their speed of typing, clicking in the damage they can do, a user with scripting is unlimited in the damage they can do. Check that people who can script understand scale.