If your bare metal operations feel stuck, slow, or fragile, the root cause probably isn’t your tech. Instead, it’s your process. Improving your bare metal process is critical to breaking through the blocks holding you back.
Before you can automate infrastructure reliably, you have to lay the groundwork. We call this Phase Zero, the work you do before anything else. It sets the stage for consistent and scalable bare metal infrastructure operations.
By succeeding at Phase Zero, you unlock three high-impact outcomes:
- Time Savings – Achieve more with less by reducing manual work and streamlining execution
- Improved Coordination – Enable smoother handoffs between teams and systems by aligning expectations and reducing friction
- Increased Flexibility – Build resilience by creating processes that can adapt to change and recover from errors without breaking
Each key step below maps to two or more of these outcomes. Together, they transform your process and platform. With this in mind, here are the five keys to Phase Zero to improve your bare metal processes. (Prefer videos? We covered this topic on our YouTube channel too!)
The Keys to Bare Metal Process Improvement
1. Simple
Processes must be simple in intent. Even if the underlying automation is complex, your team should see a straightforward workflow with clear outcomes. The steps and deliverables must be kept simple.
Improve Coordination: When teams understand what’s supposed to happen, it’s a lot easier to stay in sync. Simplicity removes lack of clarity that creates handoff delays and missteps across functions.
Increase Flexibility: A simple process is easier to troubleshoot, update, and pivot when it needs to change. Complexity hardens your systems against these changes, simplicity keeps them agile.
2. Repeatable
Repeatability is non-negotiable. If your process relies on one person’s expertise, or it can’t always follow through to the end, it’s not a good process. You must be able to run the same process anytime, anywhere and expect the same outcome.
Save Time: You waste less time debugging, re-running, or chasing partial results when your process runs the same way consistently.
Improve Coordination: Repeatable systems give teams confidence. When everyone knows the process will deliver the same results, it’s much easier to coordinate and plan ahead.
3. Automated
Your process must eliminate manual bottlenecks. People are natural bottlenecks. Even a highly skilled team can’t scale like software. Manual steps cause delays and inconsistency. Every time a person is required to approve, tweak, or validate a step, you’re slowing down and reducing reliability. Remove the manual steps wherever possible.
Save Time: Automating repetitive tasks gives hours back to your team and increases throughput.
Improve Coordination: Fewer manual interventions mean fewer blocks between teams. Automation standardizes delivery so people aren’t waiting on approvals, handoffs, and fixes.
4. Integrated
Processes don’t live in isolation. If your automation can’t interface with the rest of your stack, it’s a dead end. Integration must be intentional from day one, otherwise it won’t scale.
Improve Coordination: Integration ensures information flows across systems. It connects actions and outcomes, reducing silos and letting teams act in sync.
Increase Flexibility: Integrated systems extend capabilities more easily when requirements shift. A well-integrated process is adaptive, not brittle.
5. Visible
You need to know what’s running, when, and how it’s performing. Without visibility, even the best automation can become fragile. If an invisible process doesn’t execute how you expect, it can cause more issues downstream.
Save Time: Visibility means less time tracking down the source of invisible errors. When something breaks, you see it, fix it, and move on.
Improve Coordination: Teams can rely on real-time status and metrics. Transparency builds operational trust and accelerates collaboration.
Why Phase Zero Matters in Improving Bare Metal Processes
Too often, teams jump straight into tools and tech, thinking automation will fix their infrastructure chaos. But if your foundation is shaky, automation can just accelerate the mess. That’s why Phase Zero matters.
These five keys are the baseline for reliable, scalable bare metal operations. Get them right, and the rest of your stack becomes easier to manage. Get them wrong, and you’re setting yourself up for delays, rework, and frustration.
We have material to help you review and frame your infrastructure processes, schedule a demo and we’ll help you improve your bare metal processes based on these principles.
